The Herald

CHAPTER 9

The power of the Baelnorn’s spell was enough to force Helgore’s body back, arching in the throes of a violent shuddering, but his wards wrestled with the emerald flames, holding them at a standstill. Should they reach him, they would consume flesh and tissue, and send burning magic racing through his veins; the wards told him that much as they roiled and recoiled a few finger thicknesses from his skin.

And then the spent spell fell away.

Leaving Helgore smirking at Thurauvyn Nathalanorn, Guardian Undying of House Nathalanorn.

Time for a little goading. Fun, but more importantly, this baelnorn might be made to reveal useful things ere he destroyed it.

He could see the arch-topped stone double doors it guarded beyond it-through it, actually-and could just make out the House symbol sculpted in relief upon them. A salamander wreathed in flames, entwined around a great fish with long, whiplike barbels and a jutting, many-toothed lower jaw. All wreathed and overlaid with sinuous vines whose many tiny leaves looked like ivy. So, fire and water? Pah, it could signify anything.

“So tell me, unworthy guardian,” Helgore drawled, “why the world should remember House Nathalanorn? A few forgotten elves who comported themselves with great pride, no doubt, as all elves do. But had House Nathalanorn any real grounds for such hauteur? Who were they, and what did they achieve?”

“Nothing one who comes to destroy and despoil cares about,” the baelnorn replied coldly. “I’ll tell you nothing that will aid you in finding other crypts or making any good use of anything you find here. I am sworn, beyond death itself. So much is, I grant, obvious, but I am speaking with a human.”

“And we hairy, grasping, reeking barbarians are beneath you oh-so-superior Tel’Quess, is that it?”

“Race is not the major part of this. Youth and ignorance are. Grasping thieves and vandals of all shapes and natures are beneath the regard of House Nathalanorn,” said the baelnorn, drifting a little nearer.

Helgore retreated a step in the face of its chill.

“There is no more House Nathalanorn, old fool,” he told the undead guardian harshly. “You and your kin were forgotten an age ago, before the elves abandoned Myth Drannor to the forest, the roving beasts, and fell fiends. They remain forgotten now. I doubt if the precious coronal could name your family or recognize your blazon, if they were put before her now. You are not even memories-outside these few feet of passage and your own failing wits.”

“I have little doubt we are as nothing in your regard, creature of Telamont. Nothing more than a stronger arcanist of your own benighted city is-and your interest is spent on such powerful beings as targets to be undermined and thrown down in time, to your own advancement. If that is a life you find worthy, revel in it. You will not find much company of worth, however, swimming with you in those waters.”

Helgore shrugged. “I have no need of the adulation of others, dead elf. I know my place and my powers.”

“Knowledge born of a self-delusion so mighty is sure and certain indeed,” the baelnorn agreed caustically, drifting forward again.

This time, Helgore did not retreat, but took a deliberate step forward into the chill, his wards crackling and flaring purple in warning.

“It is past time I shattered your grating superiority, ancient fool,” he said, showing his teeth to the translucent skull face. “So let it begin between us.”

He drew back one arm as if to free it from sticky mud-and thrust it forward with crackling lines of purple-white lightning snarling from its fingertips.

The baelnorn regarded him expressionlessly from mere inches away, unmoving-and as unaffected as if his spell hadn’t existed at all.

“So, have you begun?” it asked mockingly, after Helgore’s lightning had died away. “Telamont is sure to be impressed by the swift and easy victory of his most capable agent.”

“Still your tongue,” Helgore replied venomously. “The tongue you no longer truly possess, yes? Just as you have lost all else of worth in your existence. Lovers, a body to love them with, kin, reputation … all gone. You chose to become nothing, and have achieved it. Congratulations.”

“Your biting scorn is wasted, Shadovar; your understanding is so imperfect as to render your taunts laughable emptiness. I had hoped you’d furnish me some entertainment, but you are such a sad and hollow excuse for a Thultanthan arcanist-even among that wretched company-as to be merely a waste of time. Time that’s precious only to you, for I have stepped beyond the demands of racing age.”

“Undead thing,” Helgore snapped, nettled despite himself, “be still. Your prattle is the wind of the tomb.”

“Well, at least you know the poets,” the Guardian Undying of House Nathalanorn said archly. “There may be some hope for you yet. However, you really should read more closely, being as you work with the Art. The proper words are: ‘is but as wind from a tomb.’ ”

“Do you actually presume to toy with me, talking gatepost?”

The baelnorn chuckled. “Nay, nay, nay! There’s an art to delivering an insult! This stiff, pompous snapping out of half-remembered barbed phrases wastes their cleverness and merely makes you seem more ridiculous!”

“Oh, burn you!” Helgore roared, and he lashed out with his most powerful spell.

He was rewarded by seeing Thurauvyn Nathalanorn reel back, red flames like dragonfire momentarily licking up one undead arm, as the baelnorn’s barrier spell shattered like a great pane of glass, falling to crash silently to the floor in many thousand fading shards.

And then, as Helgore laughed in glee, the counterstrike came, and the world became an icy inferno of frigid needles piercing him in a score of places. Snatching Helgore’s breath away, and all movement, and for one agonizing and seemingly endless movement, the beat of his heart.

Slow agony spread through Helgore like some sort of blind, bumbling caterpillar, and then-his heart fell back to beating with a sullen thud, the world rushed back to him as a place of eerie shrieking-his own, he realized dazedly-and he was falling, fingers writhing spasmodically, tongue undulating out of the side of his mouth as if flutteringly eager to be elsewhere …

He landed on his back with a crash, and bounced, arching in helpless agony and kicking up at the sky uncontrollably. The aftershocks of both spells rolled away along the passage floor in a shared sigh of fading, racing radiances, and then … silence fell.

A stretching quiet that was broken by both Helgore and the baelnorn saying, in almost-perfect unison, “Is that the best you can do?”

A moment later, horribly, they both started to laugh at the same moment. Dry mirth from the baelnorn, and wild hysteria from the living man.

Helgore found unfunniness first.

The forest was acrawl with bands of mercenaries hastening into the fray or trudging back to their camps to rest, and it hadn’t taken Storm, Amarune, and Arclath long to trot straight into a collision with one.

In a trice, swords had been out among the trees, and Storm’s long silver hair whirling startled hireswords into brutal thudding collisions with various handy blueleaf and duskwood trunks.

And then it was steel against steel, blades clanging and shrieking with the fury of the hacking.

“You’re no elf!” the burly mercenary snarled into Arclath’s face as they strained for supremacy in a clinch of steel, blades locked together and noses not all that far apart. “What in the Nine blazing Hells are you doing here?”

“Defending Myth Drannor from the likes of you,” Lord Delcastle replied levelly, the veins standing out on his neck in his effort, as they shoved and set their teeth-and the arms of both men started to tremble.

“Oh, stop toying with your mercenaries, dear!” Rune muttered as she ducked past in the fray, hamstringing Arclath’s foe in an instant as she went.

The man lurched sideways with a shriek that ended abruptly as Arclath’s dagger flashed into his throat. As he collapsed like a load of dumped fish on the Suzailan docks, his slayer frowned at his lady’s slender back, now plunging into a knot of mercenaries battling a lone bladesinger. “Hoy, now, was that sporting? Honorable?”

“I’m not here for sport, Lord Delcastle,” she called back, driving the pommel of her dagger into the back of a mercenary helm so fiercely that it rang like a bell and spun half around on its wearer’s head, blinding him. “And I think we’ve long agreed that I lack honor. I’m here to win.”

“Hah!” a tusk-helmed mercenary jeered as he came crashing through the trees at the head of a fresh band of hireswords. “Then you’re fighting on the wrong side! You and all these long-ears are doomed!”

“Doomed! Doomed!” various hireswords chorused, sounding like so many lowing sheep.

“Do you mind?” Storm complained, flinging the body of her most recent assailant away and moving to intercept this new force. Alone. “ ‘Doom’ was my battle cry, I’ll have you know. A good seven centuries ago, I’ll grant, but still …”

“Pah! Seven years ago, mayhap!” the tusk-helmed warrior spat. “Seven centuries, my left haunch!”

“That can be arranged,” Storm told him sweetly, her tresses lashing out to hook around his elbows and ankles as their blades clashed, whisking him up and into the path of his charging fellows.

The tusk-helmed warrior’s startled shout became a raw roar of pain as the glaive of a hard-charging hiresword thrust into his behind and tore on through. The glaive wielder was coming too fast to halt his charge or sidestep, and slammed right into the wound he’d just created, blood spraying in all directions.

As the stricken tusk-helmed warrior shrieked, the glaive wielder slipped in gore, slid right under the man he’d just wounded-and straight into Storm.

Or rather, into where she’d been. She’d sprung into the air, to come down hard with both feet on the sliding man, crotch and throat. Pinned, he managed a high-pitched strangling gurgle and a beached-fishlike thrashing ere a running bladesinger disgustedly drove a sword point in under his jaw.

By then, the mercenary charge had become a wary, scattered advance, hampered by the trees and Storm’s fury. Myth Drannan bladesingers rushed to reinforce her, forming a formidable line that had more than one mercenary backing away.

When Amarune Whitewave arose from a tangle of three large and well-armored mercenaries, covered with blood but smiling, with her three foes lolling lifeless, and Arclath Delcastle came sprinting to her side with blood on his own sword and dagger, the mercenaries had tasted enough.

They broke and ran, leaving the human handful of Myth Drannan defenders unopposed. And trading weary smiles with the bladesingers who’d stood with them.

“A small victory,” one elf muttered, “but victory nonetheless.”

“Well said,” Storm agreed. “ ‘Savor victories whatever their size, and whenever they come-they are the little lights that brighten our days.’ ”

“Thaeruld Hraumendor,” Arclath said approvingly. “From his A Life Lived Adequately. One of the better philosophers in my father’s library. Very old book; I’m surprised you know it.”

Storm gave him a dangerous look. “I knew the man, Lord Delcastle. When he was younger than you are, to boot.”

“Ah,” Arclath said, wincing. “Pray accept my apologies-bad manners to openly remind a lady of her age, very bad. In my defense, let it be said that my slight was entirely unwitting and unintentional.”

Storm’s look turned sly. “ ‘Too many of our nobles, young and old, are headstrong self-centered louts, their every act unwitting of consquences, and uncaring of unintentional side effects.’ To quote Baerauble, writing back in the reign of Tharyann the Elder. And yes, Lord Delcastle, that was before my time.”

But Arclath was staring past her, through the trees, keeping his usual watch over the nearest mercenaries. And instead of replying to her sally, he frowned and scrambled a few steps sideways, over a softly rotten stump as large around as a good-sized oval dining table, to where he could see better.

“Well, Arclath,” Storm asked gently as Rune joined her man, and he gave her an almost absent-minded hug, “what’re the foe up to?”

“Much discussion,” he replied. “Some of them are waving torches. Unlit, but by the way they’re pointing them, I think they’re debating trying to start a large forest fire.”

“Much good may that do them. If there’s one thing even young elves can master, it’s firequench magic. Still, we should alert the best archers who can be spared from the lines. Fire setters have to tarry in one spot long enough to make superb targets-and if they try to use fire arrows, we can take down their archers. I-”

The faintest of rumbles arose, and the ground under their feet rocked. Out of a nearby hollow tree burst brief tongues of red flame, amid some ghostly shards of glowing light that faded to nothingness as they started to drift away into the air.

“What was that?” Arclath hissed. “Are the besiegers down below, blasting tunnels to get past our lines?”

Storm shook her head. “Impossible, with all the roots-see you the size of these trees around us? — that’d be in their way. Moreover, we humans and elves aren’t the only things dwelling in this forest; the very badgers would be bolting up out of their burrows all around us, if any sustained tunneling was going on. No, that was something else.”

She frowned. “Probably something ancient.”

“Share,” Rune suggested sharply. “I’m beyond tired of the ‘I’m so old and wisely mysterious’ act. Thanks to Elminster.”

Storm gave her a wry smile. “Well, then, I’ll turn to handing out sayings so hoary you’ll roll your eyes: this is going to grow far worse, I fear, before it’s over.”

Rune obligingly rolled her eyes. Then gave Storm a glare and flared her nostrils like an angry horse.

The bard’s sudden grin made her look like a young girl. “Oh, that’s good,” she said admiringly. “Wish I could do that.”

Arclath sighed. “Ladies, ladies.”

Storm and Amarune turned in perfect unison to give him the same flatly withering look. “Well,” Storm remarked, “that’s not your first slip of the tongue this day, and I suppose it’ll be far from your last.”

“Ah, the joys of growing up noble,” Lord Delcastle observed. “Surrounded by spitfires. I’m quite used to it. And before you ask, know this: my mother could surround someone all by herself.”

The agent of Thultanthar faced the baelnorn before the doors of the crypt it was charged to guard, and it was not the undead guardian who was the angriest of the two.

Helgore snarled wordlessly. This was taking too long, and he certainly hadn’t expected the baelnorn to have managed to hurt him this much.

And he had so many more of them to find and destroy.

He’d just have to-but wait, the tiresome dead elf was declaiming his defiance again.

“I am Thurauvyn Nathalanorn, Guardian Undying of House Nathalanorn, and so long as any of me still exists, you shall neither pass nor prevail, human vandal.” The hiss sounded fierce-and desperate.

“Well, then, baelnorn, we shall have to see about that continued existence of yours,” Helgore taunted, with a heartiness he was far from feeling. There had better be powerful magic in the Nathalanorn crypt, because he might soon be in sore need of it. “You’ve proven to be little more than feeble bluster thus far, so it should not take me long, nor much effort …”

They both knew that was a lie, but his words at least made him feel better. This had not gone at all as he’d envisaged it, proud and confident that what Telamont had given him would allow him to sweep baelnorn to dust with a casual gesture, shattering their own baleful battle magics in an instant.

His most powerful swift spells for a fray were gone, spent in a duel that was taking far too long, and this damned undead elf was still standing, still defying him, still preventing him from taking one step nearer the door it guarded-and for that matter, down the passage beyond, seeing as this oh-so-annoying Guardian Undying of House Nathalanorn had decided it was guarding not just the crypt of its family, but the corridor outside the crypt doorway, from wall to root-laced wall.

So he couldn’t even rush past it to blast other baelnorn he might catch unawares, and then return later to deal with this one. It was blocking his path like a castle portcullis. Damn it.

“Shar take you and rend you,” Helgore muttered in the baelnorn’s direction, though latest barrier magic swirled between them like smoke, hiding it from him except for two blue eyes that blazed through the gloom at him with crimson anger flaring around their edges.

If looks could kill … but they couldn’t. Not the gaze of this ancient undead thing, at least.

And he would destroy it, would prevail here, if he just took care enough not to put a foot wrong …

He’d been impatient thus far, irked and letting his rising anger fuel overly swift and reckless attacks.

So it was more than time to try a little patience. First, another rash strike that the baelnorn would easily counter and sneer at-and in its wake, while its effects were still blossoming, three slower attacks: spell-serpents, those agonizingly slow lances of force that undulated through the air like swimming snakes toward a foe. Three, all coming at the undead elf from slightly different directions, while he kept it distracted and busy with swifter, more spectacular spells.

Yes.

He launched his rash strike-a spectacular spell that brought into being streamers of flaming acid, that he arced around to come at the baelnorn from all directions-and then, as the guardian’s smoky barrier lit up under the assault to become a brightly flaring chaos Nathalanorn shouldn’t be able to see through, Helgore created his three serpents, one after another in swift succession, and watched them begin their porpoise-like charges toward their target.

Whom he had to keep very busy, so the baelnorn wouldn’t see its doom coming for it until too late.

He hurled a swarm of magic missiles. Puny darts that the guardian’s barrier would almost certainly intercept and quell-but they were that many more twisting, racing, wheeling perils for the guardian to have to keep track of amid all the long, reaching tentacles of fiery acid homing in on it, in a tightening net that-

The magical blast that thrust at Helgore then was as sudden and powerful as it was unexpected, a speeding helix of force that tore through the barrier and snared the nearest acid streamers as it came, clawing them into itself and bringing them along as it-

Stabbed into Helgore’s shoulder, laying open his chin to the bone as he frantically twisted his head away to avoid losing his face and likely his life as it hurled him off his feet and away.

Unfortunately, the far side of the passage was so close that he crashed into its unyielding stone with force enough to shake even his cocoon of warding magics.

The raw agony of it was worse than any pain he’d ever felt in his life before, and only his wards kept him from blacking out.

Which might mean he would manage to defend himself in the moments ahead and so cling to life, but certainly meant he felt it all. Every last raging flare of pain, as he bounced off the wall and rolled to a gasping, blood-drenched stop. His left arm hung limp and useless, his shoulder was just gone, and-

He could collapse his innermost ward into healing force, and he had to, no matter what the danger. If he got away from the baelnorn …

Helgore kicked feebly at the floor, trying to scoot himself away as he sat huddled and clutching his arm, rocking from side to side and moaning.

What was the baelnorn up to, anyway? Why hadn’t it-?

Through streaming tears, as the dissolving ward flooded through him, sending relief enough that his shuddering body began to obey him again, Helgore saw …

That his serpents had reached the baelnorn and were searing into it, wriggling like hungry eels as they burned its undeath, boring in and up and through.

Translucent flesh sagged, seeming to melt, the baelnorn’s mouth yawned open in a long and soundless scream, and it spent itself, falling from a thing with limbs and a head into a racing streak of glowing undeath, howling at him through its own fading barrier, racing at him in what expanded into a ghostly fanged maw fringed with many reaching taloned arms, talons that grew impossibly long-

And then faded away against his last, feebly flickering ward, and tore it down.

Baelnorn and ward vanished together, in small writhing snarls of nothingness that fell from him, to roll away, and fade as they rolled … across the suddenly dark and quiet stone passage.

He was alone. The Guardian Undying was no more.

Helgore lay there panting and staring into the darkness for what seemed a long time before he mastered the pain enough to work a restorative spell on his shoulder, sacrificing three lesser battle spells to fuel that healing.

It was longer still before he felt whole enough again to roll cautiously over and try to get up. As far as his knees, at least, to stare around at a passage that seemed strangely unmarked for all the raging magic that had so recently been hurled around in it. It was deserted. Dark and empty, with no elves racing to see what had made all the tumult.

And there, mockingly close to him, stood the doors of the crypt of House Nathalanorn that the baelnorn had guarded for centuries before his birth, and had fallen defending against him. Just as-if things went much better than this first bumbling assault-many other baelnorn would fall.

Wincing, for although the pain had fled to no more than a dull ache of reminder, his restored shoulder was stiff, Helgore got to his feet. His shoulder felt … odd. As if it wasn’t truly part of him. It didn’t seem to fit, somehow.

He shook his arm and flexed the fingers, numbness racing along them and then fading, as he studied the Nathalanorn House symbol. That entwined salamander and fish, amid a sinuous and clinging forest of ivy. At least, that’s what it looked like, and he supposed there was no one left in the world to correct him about that now.

He had won.

Helgore permitted himself a smile, then walked a few cautious steps back and forth in the passage to make sure his body was his own once more. It was high time to, as the arcanists who’d first tutored him had been fond of saying, “Get on with it.”

He hadn’t much magic left, but this should suffice, right now …

He worked a swift magic, remembering to step aside as he finished, and had the satisfaction of watching the crypt door shatter.

The pieces, however, hung in place, hovering in midair, the broken edges glowing and pulsing with the angry blue racing glows of disturbed magic. So his way was still barred. Of course.

Helgore snorted. Misbegotten elves!

He spent the slightest of spells to sweep the shattered pieces of door aside, to crash down on the passage floor. Several of them slumped straight into dust.

Leaving him facing another set of doors. An inner pair that were closed and intact and seemingly not locked. These would, of course, bear an enchantment that would slay any non-elf-or any elf not bearing the right token-touching them, to prevent tomb looting.

So it would take another spell to … wait.

Helgore looked back down the passage the way he’d come, and there it was: the skin of the elf he’d slain. Rippling and lifting a little as he gazed at it, like a cat or quiet dog craving attention.

He gave the skin a wry little smile, worked a very small and simple magic-of the sort wizards these days called cantrips-and bent his will on it.

Obediently, it slithered forward, flowing to the doors and climbing them like some sort of animated, rearing leaf. At his direction, it wrapped itself around the pull ring of the inner doors, turned it, and pulled.

The doors opened in eerie silence, revealing the faint blue glow of a ward. By its light, he could see into the circular, dome-shaped crypt of the Nathalanorns.

He could see dozens of effigies on the floor. Or, no, they were the crumbling, ancient skeletons of elves, cloaked in magic that almost hid them from swift and distant scrutiny-magic that shaped the likeness of the dead as if they were alive but lying on their backs, asleep. Intangible effigies of magic, rather than the sculpted stone that adorned the tombs of some dwarves and humans. And-ahh-what he’d come for and had begun to hope hard for, in addition to the crypt ward itself, was there as well-small areas where the blue ward glow was more intense, unmoving spots centered on swords, hunting horns, harps, gauntlets, bracers, and breastplates interred with or upon the dead. Magic items.

Helgore looked up and down the passage again to make sure no one was approaching. Finding it as deserted and silent as before, he drew in a deep breath, settled himself into a comfortable stance, legs balanced well apart, and worked one of the longest and most intricate magics he’d ever been taught.

He was shaking with weariness when he was done, but if this worked, that would shortly cease to be a problem.

And so would whatever spells any baelnorn hurled his way.

Helgore smiled and held out both hands to what he could see of the crypt, as if it was a young child he was beckoning to run into his arms.

What stole out of the crypt was utterly silent, and slower than a child. It was more like a scent wafting through the air, inexorably drifting toward him, and up his arms-his fingers tingled as if struck by sparks, then went numb-into him.

Yes! His weariness melted away, his hair slowly straightened to stand quivering on end, his scalp lifted and prickled, his teeth started to itch … power was sliding into him, the force captured and stored by all those enchantments now becoming his, building in him, building …

Helgore stood silently, watching swords and harps and armor slumping to dust in the crypt as the magic left them and flowed into him, more and more of it.

The effigies faded, the bones slumped to dust, and the walls of the tomb cracked, long jagged lines moving across the hitherto-smooth dome, as the blue light grew fainter and fainter …

Until all of the power of House Nathalanorn was a visible blue-white line in the air, flowing into his embrace. And he was filling up, feeling the first rising discomfort as he swelled, on his way to bursting with energy-a discomfort that swiftly became pain, and that pain grew and grew …

He was quivering, a quivering that became trembling, that fell swiftly into uncontrollable shuddering. All of his wounds were gone, healed by the blue-white fire still sliding inexorably into him, but the boon was now agony, his skin starting to glow blue-white, his eyes turning to blue-white flames.

Blue-white fire spilled from his lips as he groaned, a long moan escaping from blue-white lips, a moan that started deep but rose slowly in pitch and urgency-

And then it was done.

The crypt of House Nathalanorn stood dark and empty, and Helgore Ulitlarathulm swayed and shuddered in the passageway, swollen with blue-white light that boiled and leaked out of him as he turned, lurching like a drunken man whose knees were too stiff to bend, and stalked like a zombie down the passage.

Drunk on power, swollen to gasping pain from all the energies surging through him. Heading for the next crypt.

It was surprisingly close to the one he’d just ravaged. This one had a device he recognized on its doors, an emblem that had been in the records that had been gathered to prepare him for his task. It was not something easily described-privately, he thought of it as the tangled collision of three harps-but Helgore knew it at first glance. It marked the crypt behind it as that of House Erembelore.

He lurched up to the doors, but no baelnorn appeared. So he fought the pain down to a few moments of precise control-and blasted the doors to nothingness, aiming sideways so if anything more shattered, it would be the stone of the doorframe, and nothing in the crypt beyond.

That brought out the Erembelore baelnorn, in a cold rage that Helgore was still in too much pain to indulge with high words.

He merely sent enough energy to make himself feel far more comfortable right through the undead guardian, a roaring that consumed it before it could utter a sound.

Helgore took five unsteady steps forward, right through the sighing, eddying, glowing dust that a moment ago had been an elf who’d spent centuries guarding his dead kin. He paused just long enough to make sure it was indeed gone, and not lurking as some sort of malicious remnant, and-fell headlong into the dim blue radiance of the last resting place of the Erembelores.

That hadn’t been so hard, he thought dully, trying to collect his thoughts. The pain was almost all gone, and the dazedness that had almost overwhelmed him had been dashed out of him by his sudden meeting with the cold and unyielding floor.

He rolled over, almost absently spending a little more of his seized energies to banish the bruises of his fall, and settled himself on his back, listening hard.

There were no sounds in the passage outside, no sign that anyone had heard. All that was audible was his own breathing. Around him, the crypt was still and silent, the Erembelores sleeping the slumber from which no one awakens.

Good.

Now for the spell the Most High had devised just for him. Now that at last he had gained excess energy enough to fuel it, and didn’t have the more pressing need to heal himself.

Lying on the floor, Helgore cast that magic with slow and exacting care … and just as slowly, something dark and edged in purple formed in the air above him, half seen and menacing.

The dark outline of a sword, floating horizontally. A sword large enough for a smallish giant, nine feet long and utterly dark, with no hint of light reflected back off metal-or of metal at all.

A Shadow Sword. Just as Telamont had crafted, and just as had formed when he’d first practiced the spell. Helgore released the stolen energy roiling in his body into it. Blue-white fire silently streamed out of him, flaring into brief tongues of flame, ere it vanished into the blade’s all-devouring darkness.

Every moment brought relief, less pain, and the opportunity to relax. So relax he did, at last, indulging himself in a long moan of bliss.

Then Helgore rolled over and up to his feet, feeling marvelous. He chuckled and pointed the sword-and stood watching as it drained the wards and magics of this second crypt, family treasures sighing into little heaps of ash and dust as the Shadow Sword drank all their magic, effigies fading and the bones beneath them sighing into eddying dust.

This time, the darkness flared momentarily blue-white around its edges, seeming more solid and a trifle larger.

Then it subsided into darkness that verged on invisibility again.

Soon would come the time to slice at the mighty mythal above and around him with it, to sever it from most of its anchors so its energies could be drained quickly. Soon.

But not yet. To do so now would be to alert every elf of Myth Drannor to the doom yawning before them.

For now, the Shadow Sword would slay baelnorn and drink in more elven magic.

Helgore went hunting more prey. Haughty elves who’d lurked down here for centuries, serenely confident in their hollow achievements and service. The world was better off without them. Was better off without any toothless posers, least of all those who lorded it over humans as inferior barbarians, uncouth and dim-witted and …

Lip curling, Helgore stalked on. Following the passage around several scalloped curves, as the ancient way snaked around the mighty roots of age-old forest giants, to yet another double door carved with the device of an elf House. Its baelnorn faded through the closed doors to confront him.

Smilingly, he sketched a mocking bow.

“Who are you?” the undead guardian asked sternly. “You are no elf, and I fear you intrude here for no good or honorable reason. What is your purpose, smirking human?”

Helgore made no reply to this tiresome challenge, but merely willed the Shadow Sword forward. It glided down to transfix and drain the baelnorn in midspeech, destroying it before he had to lift a finger.

Helgore didn’t bother to even look at the House carving this time. After all, what did it really matter?

Just another tomb full of dead elves, already forgotten. The sword drank them, and Helgore smiled and headed for the next crypt, his great weapon a silent silver line rippling with shadow in his wake.

Only to find his way barred, this time, by elves in armor. Faces furious, and hastening to form a line, swords out.

“Foul despoiler, your life is forfeit. Go greet the gods!” one of them cried.

“After you, elf.” Helgore sneered, dropping to one knee and letting the Shadow Sword pass over him.

Sped by his will, it raced forward to devour.

Living, unliving, magic; what did it matter?