Forsaken House

CHAPTER 2

15 Alturiak, the Year of Lightning Storms

As the dim sunrise glimmered in the tower's window slits, Araevin gathered with the surviving mages of Reilloch Domayr in the conservatory. The great hall was in no condition to host a meeting of the circle. He left Ilsevele to lead the Tower guards in scouring the grounds for any enemies who might have been left behind by their comrades' escape.

The conservatory was a large, high-ceilinged hall that occupied the entire upper floor of the gatehouse. It was floored with gleaming old oak, and its paneled walls were finished with dark cherry carved in sylvan scenes. The place was used as a recital hall by the bards and music students who drifted through Tower Reilloch. Araevin had attended many recitals there, but had little gift for music himself. He found five mages waiting for him there.

"Welcome, Araevin," said the Loremaster Quastarte. He was a sun elf of great age, his eyes dark with wisdom in his young-old face, his hair so thin and white it seemed like a nimbus flowing down his shoulders. "We are all here, then."

"We are all that remains?" Araevin asked, astonished.

He glanced around the room, unable to keep himself from looking to see if he had perhaps missed one of his colleagues. Beside Araevin, there had been eight others who held the rank of mage. But only five of Araevin's colleagues were there: Quastarte, the wood elf sorcerer known as Eaglewind, the diviner Yesvellde Shaerim, the half-elf battle-mage Jorildyn, and the young abjurer Faelindel.

"I know that Earelde fell," Araevin continued, "but where are Olleile and Starsong?"

"Both slain in their Reverie. The invaders broke into their chambers before the alarm was raised," Quastarte said.

"Aillesel seldaritf, Araevin said softly. "The Seldarine preserve us. There is no end to the sorrow of this day." He bowed his head, hesitating before asking his next question. "The high mages?"

"We have not found Philaerin yet," said Quastarte, "but the fact that he was not seen in the battle and has not appeared since leads me to fear the worst. He was not in his chambers."

The others nodded in agreement. If Philaerin lived, he would have defended the Tower.

"Kileontheal lives, but she is grievously wounded," Yesvelde said. Yesvelde was a moon elf, with long dark hair and a distant, ethereal manner to her. She carried a sleek cat in her arms, her familiar Versei. Araevin felt thea quick gray shadow of Whyllwyst flicker across his heart, but made himself focus on Yesvelde's words. "She was struck senseless by a spell of insanity during the fight outside the great hall, a few minutes after issuing her call to the circle. She fled the battle, hurling spells at imaginary foes in the tower halls until she exhausted her power." The illusionist sighed. "I had no means to undo the enchantment afflicting her, so I directed the guards to confine her in her quarters and keep her under constant care until we can find a healer for her."

"Aeramma Durothil is dead," said Eaglewind. He was a grave and quiet fellow for a wood elf, more at home in the solitude of the forest than in the company of his peers. Araevin sometimes suspected that he was a sylvan creature of some sort who simply wore the shape of a wood elf for the convenience of the others, but he had never pressed the question. "I found him in the astrolabe an hour after the raiders fled. It looked like he destroyed a number of those who came against him. I found shadows shaped like demons blasted into the walls there."

"So one high mage is dead, one missing, and one incapacitated," Araevin sighed. "And three of us are dead, as well. What of the initiates and the other folk of the Tower?"

The initiates were the lesser wizards and sorcerers, those who were still new in their studies and not yet accounted members of the Circle. There had been fourteen of them.

Jorildyn, a seasoned battle-mage, stepped forward. He had human blood-something that was quite unusual on Evermeet, and regarded with great suspicion in some quarters-and was thickly built compared to the others, with a gray-streaked beard and a gruff manner.

"Four initiates are dead," the half-elf reported. "We also lost nine of the Tower Guards and several more of the Tower folk. About twenty are wounded, but all should recover with care." His face was grim. "We must see to our defenses at once, and make sure this cannot happen again."

"We will need a high mage for that, and none are available," Araevin observed. "We must suffice, then. Quastarte, you are the eldest among us. I will be content to follow your orders."

"You are a more skillful wizard than I, Araevin. I would not presume to command you. Or any of you, for that matter. I can only suggest what seems wise to me."

"Then let us hear what seems wise to you, Loremas-ter," Jorildyn said, "and we will take your suggestions as commands."

Quastarte fell silent, thinking for a moment, then said, "Very well, then. First, someone must carry word of the attack to the Queen in Leuthilspar, the sooner the better. Does anyone have a spell of teleporting prepared?"

"Not I," said Yesvelde.

"I am afraid I used mine to return to the tower when Kileontheal called," Araevin said. "I cannot ready another for hours."

"I have a scroll I can use," said Faelindel. "I will leave at once."

The abjurer bowed to the other mages and left the chamber, striding quickly.

"Jorildyn and Eaglewind-take charge of the Tower defenses. I do not think our attackers will return, but we must not be caught off guard again if they do."

"It will be done," Jorildyn replied.

"Yesvelde, you are a skilled diviner. See if you can learn who our attackers were, and where they came from. We may be able to organize pursuit, if we can learn these things."

The diviner bowed her head, accepting her task. "What of me?" Araevin asked.

"I want you to carefully examine the vaults, armories, and libraries," Quastarte said. "The hellspawn and their winged masters did not come here simply for mayhem and murder. They must have been looking for something. You know the vaults as well as I. Determine if anything is missing." The old loremaster looked at the other mages. "In the meantime, I will search for Philaerin. If he is not here, perhaps he was cast into another plane or banished to some far realm by our enemies."

Araevin nodded and replied, "I will report back at once if I find anything amiss."

Over many centuries, the mages who had dwelled at Tower Reilloch had accumulated many magical devices: mighty staves, deadly battle-wands, rings that stored or deflected spells, crystal orbs, enchanted cloaks, and tomes of perilous lore. Many of them had been crafted, forged, or scribed by the circle's own sorcerers and wizards, while others were prizes of battle, or long-forgotten artifacts that had been brought to Reilloch for safekeeping. Araevin had created a few of the things himself, since he was a skilled artificer of magical devices, and he had brought even more to the Tower from his explorations of old elven ruins in Faerun. His intermittent research into the magical artifices of lost elven realms had required a careful study of the devices stored in the Tower's vaults.

Some of Reilloch's vaults were buried in the deep foundations, others were hidden high atop isolated towers, and a few were in extradimensional spaces that could be reached only through specific doors or chambers in otherwise innocuous portions of the fortress. Most were protected by spells of sealing and concealment that were virtually impenetrable. The vaults containing the most dangerous items were also guarded by lethal spell traps, terrible sigils that would utterly destroy anyone trying to pass them without knowledge of how to do so safely.

The first two vaults Araevin checked were secure, their spells of closing still intact. Araevin quickly inventoried their contents anyway, and found that nothing had been removed. That makes sense, he realized. Raiders after a specific target could not afford to waste time deliberately locating and opening each vault, not unless they were confident of defeating the circle in its entirety and holding the Tower in the face of every counterattack that could be thrown at them. Most likely it would be a single vault that had been attacked. He descended into the mazelike levels below the great hall, and found another vault undisturbed. That was not the case with the fourth vault he checked, however.

At the end of a long, low corridor with a ceiling of groined stone stood a door of iron and adamantine leading to a place known as Nandiyerron's Armory, after the archmage who had built the room a thousand years before. Araevin turned into the corridor leading to the armory, and realized at once that something was amiss. Whispers of spectral magic, the remnants of deadly spell traps even he did not understand, whirled and drifted in the heavy air of the passageway, and the door at the far end stood open. The walls and floor were deeply pitted with black, bubbled stone, as if great gouts of acid or fire had been loosed there, and the stink of hot stone still lingered.

Philaerin lay crumpled before the open door, his staff broken in his burned hands.

"Eldest…" Araevin whispered.

He picked his way down the scored passageway and knelt beside the high mage. A black, even hole had been blasted through the center of Philaerin's chest by some slaying spell, but none of the attackers had managed to so much as scratch him otherwise. Araevin glanced at the passage around him, trying to guess at how many spells had been thrown there while the battle raged in the tower above. Demons, yugoloths, and such monsters summoned from the infernal planes did not leave bodies behind when they were slain-they returned to the foul hells from which they had been called forth. Philaerin might have repelled a few attackers, a small army of them, or none at all, but the battle had gone on long enough for many spells to damage the passageway.

Araevin rose and stepped into the vault of Nandiyerron, quickly examining what was left of its contents. All the Tower's vaults stored a number of relatively minor items, such as rings bearing protective enchantments, or arms and armor that any wizard or priest of middling power might make. He was not concerned about things like that. It was not good that such devices had been stolen, but they were not truly dangerous. On the other hand some of the vaults held uniquely dangerous items, things that could do great harm in the wrong hands. And Araevin saw at once that something important was indeed missing from the vault.

"The Gatekeeper's Crystal," he said aloud. "Damnation."

No one knew who had made the Gatekeeper's Crystal, or even when it had been made, but it was a powerful weapon indeed, an artifact that could easily disjoin and destroy magical wards and protections of any sort. The device consisted of three similar shards, each a dagger-shaped wedge of pale unbreakable crystal. Tower Reilloch held only one of the shards. The other two were lost, as far as Araevin knew. But perhaps those who had attacked the Tower knew differently.

"Araevin? Is that you?" Quastarte's voice echoed from the passages outside.

"I am here, Loremaster," Araevin called. He stepped out of the armory and knelt beside Philaerin again. "I have found Philaerin. And I have found what is missing."

The old sun elf entered the passageway and halted.

"Is he-?"

"Yes," said Araevin. "He was trying to keep them from the shard."

"Ah, no," Quastarte breathed as he hurried to the side of the Eldest, tears brimming in his eyes. "So that is what they were after, then. The Seldarine know what sort of evil they plan with it."

"They will need the other two pieces to use the device, won't they?" Araevin asked.

"Each shard is dangerous in its own right," Quastarte said. "But in conjunction, the three shards together are terribly powerful. Almost one thousand years ago the joined crystal was used to destroy the defenses of Myth Ondath. Only five years past, the Harpers used the crystal to throw down the old defenses of Hellgate Keep and raze that fortress of evil. But each time the crystal is used for such a purpose, its three parts separate and hurl themselves across vast distances and into far planes. It took us two years to find this one piece after the Harpers used it against Ascalhorn."

"And now it is gone."

Quastarte sighed and said, "We thought it would be safe here, if anywhere."

Araevin looked down at the fallen high mage on the pocked stone floor. Philaerin's face was not peaceful in death. His teeth were bared in a rictus of agony, and his eyes were wide and staring. He reached down to compose the Eldest's features, but as his hand neared Philaerin's face, a thin, cold sensation of magic at work briefly kissed his fingertips.

He drew back quickly and said, "Odd. There's a spell on him."

Quastarte leaned close.

"Hmm. Yes, I feel it too. A defense of his? Or some curse of his enemies?"

"It was not very powerful. Not much of a defense or a curse." Araevin considered for a moment. "I will try to negate it."

Quastarte nodded. Araevin drew a breath, then spoke the words of a spell of negation, canceling out the charm he had sensed. To his surprise, the spell crumpled at once, flaring bright blue as it did so. He saw at once that it was a minor dimensional pocket of some sort, a temporary storing place not much larger than a big goblet. The spell ended, and from the imaginary space a small gemstone suddenly appeared, clattering to the ground. It was a deep green, so dark as to be almost black, and a glimmering white star flickered in its depths.

"What in the world?" Araevin breathed.

"A telkiira! " Quastarte said. "I have not seen one like this before."

Araevin leaned back, thinking. Telkiira were small gemstones that could hold the thoughts or memories of their makers, even potent arcane lore such as spells or the rites necessary to create enchanted items.

"I wonder what this one holds?" he said.

"Whatever it was, Philaerin considered it important enough to conceal from his attackers." Quastarte frowned and picked it up in his hand, studying it carefully, and continued, "It doesn't advertise its secret, it seems. Sometimes all one has to do is touch a telkiira in order to find out what it contains. But this one is guarded against casual contact."

"Would the demons return for that, do you think?"

"I don't know," the loremaster said. "But we should make sure that it does not fall into their hands. Perhaps you should hold onto it, Araevin. If the demons do return, you will defend it better than I."

Araevin took the stone and gazed into its depths. It seemed an ordinary gemstone, if a somewhat valuable one.

"Very well," said Araevin. "Since our enemies have shown that they can enter our vaults and know something of where we keep our more powerful relics, it may make sense to keep it close at hand instead of simply hiding it again."

He exchanged a dark look with Quastarte and understood that the old loremaster shared his true concern. The raiders had known their way around Tower Reilloch quite well. They might have prepared their attack for months, secretly scrying the Tower's defenses… or perhaps they had had assistance from someone familiar with the Tower's secrets.

"True," Quastarte said, thinking aloud. "Of course, that suggests to me that perhaps you should remove it from the tower entirely. Do you think you might absent yourself for a short time?"

"If you are certain you will not need me here," Araevin replied. He found a silk handkerchief in his pocket and carefully wrapped the telkiira within. "I could go to Lord Miritar's estate and visit with Ilsevele and her father for a time. He is a councilor of the realm, and deserves a firsthand report of what happened here. And it would seem perfectly innocuous for Ilsevele and I to go to Elion for a time. No one would think it out of the ordinary, would they?"

The old loremaster grasped Araevin by the shoulder and said, "We may be jumping at shadows, but at this moment I would rather take too many precautions than too few."

"Do not hesitate to summon me back if I am needed," Araevin replied. He stood and slipped the small, silk-wrapped stone into his belt pouch. "Once I am away from here, I will examine the stone more closely to see if I can determine what is hidden inside. It may shed some light on who our attackers were, and what they intend to do with the shard."

"And I will search through Philaerin's tomes and journals to see if he makes any mention of it." Quastarte rose as well. "Come. Before you leave, we must summon the other mages and tell them what has been taken from the Tower."

Nurthel Floshin stretched wide his black, leathery wings, and dropped closer to the snow-covered ground. He was in a hurry, and he beat his powerful wings tirelessly against the winter sky. Nurthel cut a striking figure, a demonic elf with scarlet-scaled skin and large batlike wings, clad in armor of enchanted golden scales, one eye covered by a rune-scribed patch.

Miles behind him, the rest of his raiding party proceeded on foot, too heavily burdened with their plunder to fly. It was not a particularly good day for flying, anyway. The clouds were low and thick, and freezing rain was falling all across the rugged hills and thick forests of the Delimbiyr Vale.

Nurthel allowed himself a smile of pleasure. The Gatekeeper's Crystal gave him the perfect excuse to hurry on ahead of the other fey'ri. He carried the artifact inside his golden scale shirt, wrapped tightly in a leather pouch. He started gaining altitude again, as the foothills of the Nether Mountains began to mount skyward from the river vale. His mistress had chosen her stronghold with an eye toward remoteness and isolation. None but the most determined-or foolhardy-of travelers passed that way. There the Delimbiyr turned east, fed by numerous streams known as the Talons-swift, racing rivers that descended from the snow-covered mountains to the north.

Nurthel followed the Starsilver, the second of those streams, and after a few miles found a round hilltop rising up before him. Its slopes were shaped in graceful terraces inundated by the forest, and old white ramparts green with moss and vines climbed across the hillside. Glaurachyndaar, a great city of fallen Eaerlann, had once been known as Myth Glaurach, City of Scrolls. Crumbling colonnades and empty buildings choked with rubble were all that remained of the elven city, but deep catacombs led to hidden armories and jagged chasms beneath the hill.

He wheeled once and dived down through the snow-clad fir trees, alighting in a ruined old courtyard. He shook his wings vigorously, ignoring the quiver of fatigue from his rapid flight, and folded them behind his back. Nurthel made his way through an old archway into the palace proper. A thin crust of snow lay on the uneven ground within the white walls, and most of the halls and corridors were open to the sky above. It struck Nurthel as supremely ironic that the very palace of Myth Glaurach's grand mage should serve as the hidden citadel of she who had once been the most dangerous enemy of the realm of Eaerlann.

He came to a broken white tower and entered. That place at least still had intact floors above, so the ceiling kept out the rain and the snow, but its broad windows were blank and empty, the old theurglass that once covered them long since gone. The chamber possessed a magnificent view of forest-covered hills and snowy mountain peaks beyond. Comfortable furnishings-elegant divans, credenzas, and bookshelves, with a gorgeous tapestry secured on one wall-stood carefully placed in the room's interior so as not to be exposed to the weather.

"My lady!" he cried. "I have returned!"

"So I see, Nurthel." A sinuously graceful figure turned from the wide, empty window. "You took care to conceal your retreat?"

"Yes, my lady. We used the ring gate to return to the ruins of Ascalhorn."

Ascalhorn, the city later known as Hellgate Keep, and later still nothing but a windswept ruin, was almost thirty miles away. The fey'ri lord went to one knee, bowing in the presence of his mistress.

Like the fey'ri who served her, Sarya Dlardrageth possessed both demon and elf blood. But in her case, she was a true daemonfey, and her demonic bloodline was pronounced indeed. The demonspawned sun elves known as fey'ri were descended through several generations from the mating of elf and demon, but Sarya was a princess of House Dlardrageth. Her father was a balor, a great and terrible demon lord. Sarya's skin was deep red and her hair a blazing orange-gold as bright as a flame. She favored gold-embroidered robes of black that overlapped like plates of dark armor, carefully crafted to incorporate powerful defensive enchantments and leave her adequate room to flex her wings in flight or wield the sinister spells at her command.

"You may rise." Sarya said.

She turned her back on the windows and came closer, moving with the restless grace of a predatory animal kept in a space too small for her. Nurthel knew that she used the tower for her own quarters because of the numerous windows and open spaces beyond, since she strongly disliked confining spaces.

"Well, Lord Floshin, let me see my prize," she said.

Nurthel lifted his eyes to his queen's face and stood. Despite her fiendish heritage, she was seductively beautiful, with classic elf features and the figure of a winsome girl. At a glance one might think her no more than twenty years of age… but her eyes were cold and malevolent with an ageless evil. Sarya Dlardrageth had first walked the world more than five thousand years past.

"As you command, my lady," he said. He reached beneath his tunic of scale mail and drew out the broken crystal in its pouch, offering it to her. "The paleblood elves and their rabble were careless, as you said they would be. They were not expecting an attack, and we slew dozens before they remembered how to fight."

"No one remembers how to fight, in this diminished age," Sarya replied. "How many did you lose?"

She did not place any great value on her servants' lives, but she didn't have many fey'ri at her command. Each life was a resource not to be wasted lightly.

"Five fey'ri fell to the Tower defenders, my lady. We were careful to carry off the dead. Most of the yugoloths and demons died too, but of course they were summoned and bound for that purpose, and we expected to spend them in battle."

"You have done well, Nurthel. Very well indeed."

Sarya took the bundle from his hand and quickly unwrapped the crystal, discarding the cover. She caressed the device with her taloned hands. The stone was a pale, milky white, perhaps six inches long and triangular in shape, with a curiously beveled base and a long, tapering point. A glimmer of violet fire seemed to dance in its depths. Swirls of phosphorescence drifted in the wake of Sarya's fingertips as she touched the crystal.

"For over five thousand years I dreamed of holding the key to my prison in my hand," she mused, admiring the stone. "Fifty-eight centuries crawled by while I waited and watched. Sharrven and Siluvanede passed away, and I waited. Eaerlann-hated Eaerlann-grew old and decrepit and forgot the ancient enemies her lords had imprisoned beneath their fortresses, and still I waited and watched. The city of Ascalhorn was raised up over my living tomb, and I watched when demons and devils warred in the streets, driving out the simpering humans and their paleblooded friends. Fifty centuries I dreamed of this, Nurthel, and now only five short years after gaining my freedom, the crystal is mine. The irony of it!"

"You are free now, my lady. The ancient treachery of your foes has been undone."

Sarya's eyes narrowed and she said, "Only through the ignorance of foolish adventurers, who thought to cleanse Ascalhorn with no less a weapon than the Gatekeeper's Crystal."

They succeeded in throwing down Hellgate Keep-dying heroically in the process, of course-but they had also managed to crack the deeply buried magical prison in which

Sarya and her daemonfey sons had been interred thousands of years before the city of Ascalhorn had been raised.

At once Sarya had set about exploring the new world that had grown over the ruins of the one she had known five millennia earlier. In the five years since the Harpers had unknowingly set her free, she had gathered together the remnants of the fey'ri, demonspawned elves who had served House Dlardrageth in the days of her glory. Some, such as Nurthel himself, she had liberated from lesser prisons similar to her own. Others she had found hiding in distant planes, and a handful had survived unimpris-oned, hiding amid the cities of her enemies. And she had also turned her attention to unraveling the mystery of her freedom, employing all of her formidable sorcery to learn how and why she had come to be freed.

"I wonder how the palebloods of Evermeet found the third piece," he said.

The daemonfey princess shrugged.

"Most likely it was found by some human mageling or tomb-plunderer," she said, "who recognized it as elf-work and sold it to someone who understood its true worth. My divinations informed me of the crystal's location, but did not suffice to solve the mystery of its travels."

She turned to a golden coffer that stood on one table, and spoke a charm of opening. Inside gleamed two crystals virtually identical to the one she held in her hand. The first segment Sarya had found in the rubble of Hell-gate Keep, soon after gaining her freedom. It took her four years, but she eventually found the second piece in a volcano in Avernus, first of the Nine Hells.

She lifted out the other pieces one at a time and joined them, base-to-base. As each segment's lower facet touched that of the neighboring segment, the crystal glowed blue and melded together, forming a seamless, perfect whole. When the last piece was added, the device seemed to hum with power. It resembled a three-pointed star almost a foot in diameter, stronger than steel and imbued with magic beyond mortal means.

"Ah," Sarya purred. "What a pretty trinket this is!"

"Will it work?" Nurthel asked, peering at the artifact.

"Oh, yes," Sarya said. "Nothing can stand against it, though we must be careful, or else it will fly apart and fling its component crystals to the far ends of the multi-verse. I dare not invoke its powers here, not within the spell wards of Myth Glaurach-but it will serve for the task I have in mind. I am confident of it."

Sarya replaced the conjoined crystal in its coffer, then set a lethal spell over the chest. She gestured at a decanter of dark wine and a pair of golden goblets across the room, summoning them to her hand.

"Now, what of the rest of your mission? How did that proceed?"

"We battled at least two, perhaps three high mages. We killed the two we were certain of and destroyed a number of lesser mages, too. Some had skill, others were mere novices. We plundered what we could from the Tower, and left before the mages managed to organize their defenses."

"And what of Kaeledhin's key?"

"We did as you directed, my lady. I attended to the matter personally," Nurthel said. The fey'ri lord accepted a goblet from his lady's hand and sipped the fiery vintage within. He dropped his eyes to his golden cup and swirled the wine thoughtfully. "Still… I do not see the point of it. We have the Gatekeeper's Crystal. That seems sufficient."

"Perhaps," Sarya replied. She turned and paced absently away, resuming the endless prowling she fell into when her mind was engaged. "But once I use the crystal, it is almost certain to fly apart again, and it may take years to reassemble. I would like a more permanent weapon at my disposal. In any event, it seems that Evermeet will remember our visit for some time."