The Herald

CHAPTER 15

Blue lightning stabbed briefly out into the passage as the last rubble fell away. Mattick and Vattick regarded each other across it, smiled, and when the lancing death was done, stepped through the archway with one accord, boots crunching on the rubble where Mattick had breached and shattered the crypt doors.

House Velanralyn had died out a long time ago, by the looks of things. Corpses sighed into dust at the most delicate of touches, and Vattick swiftly gave up on trying to see what sort of dead elf was wearing or holding what-he just started snatching things of magic as fast as his brother was, and draining them.

Briefly flaring blue glow after silent blue glow, they worked their way across the crypt. It was larger and dimmer than most, and they went to the highest, grandest biers and catafalques, one after another, leaving the lesser interments until later. The two arcanists watched uncertainly for a moment, and then one took up a guard’s stance at the shattered entrance, and the other-the one afflicted with scales migrating around his body-joining the harvesting of magic items, collecting them rather than draining them as the two Tanthuls were.

As the draining went on, Mattick felt more powerful than ever in his life before, swollen and tingling and itching to hurl spells and blast screaming elf faces to nothingness. Then a stealthy movement seen out of the corner of his eye made him turn, in time to see the scaly arcanist slip a glowing blue ring into a belt pouch.

A moment later, the kneeling arcanist gasped and swayed forward-as the point of Vattick’s sword burst out of his breast.

Mattick’s brother had run the Shadovar through from behind. He twisted his blade to make the sobbing, convulsing arcanist feel more pain. Then pulled it out-and slid it back into the shade’s body at a different angle and twisted it again.

The raw shrieks and gurglings were impressive.

The other arcanist came from the crypt entrance to watch, reluctant and white faced, as his scaly fellow Shadovar died slowly and horribly on Prince Vattick’s magical sword.

When the thieving Thultanthan was still and silent at last, Vattick kicked the body off his steel, wiped the blade clean on the dead, staring face, and drawled, “I knew we’d have to make a lesson of someone. It was just a matter of who.”

He slashed open the dead arcanist’s pouch, hooked the ring on the tip of his sword, flung it into the air, and caught and drained it, letting the dust the ring crumbled into trickle out of his palm onto the dead man’s face.

Mattick looked at the sole surviving arcanist. The man’s face was the color of old bone, and he was swallowing repeatedly, as if something was caught in his throat.

A curse, probably.

“Next crypt,” Mattick ordered him briskly, and followed his words with an impish smile.

The last arcanist shuddered and swallowed again. Hard.

“Beloved teacher,” Elminster said gently, “we are indeed going somewhere. Up out of here, to the heart of Myth Drannor. I think ye know why.”

The Srinshee nodded.

“The hour of need is come,” she said sadly. “Being as some are contemplating destroying the mythal.”

“Olue,” El asked gravely, “ye aren’t going to resist us, are ye?”

“No. What you are attempting is needful. It tears at my heart to lose this bright city again-oh, how it hurts-but I would lose a thousand Myth Drannors if the loss could save Faerûn. We elves can go to Semberholme, or find trees elsewhere. If the dwarves can abandon all their homes and travel far and do whatever is needful to endure, so can we. So shall we. Yes, El, I’m with you.”

“Oh, thank Mystra!” El exclaimed in relief as he rushed to her, arms flung wide.

The Srinshee smiled, and burst into a rush of her own. They ended up in each other’s arms, and El swept the small guardian off her feet in a fierce embrace.

Laeral gave her sister a sardonic look. “This is why he never gets any work done!”

“Oh, I’d not say that, Sister,” Alustriel countered, watching El and the Srinshee weeping softly and murmuring to each other, rocking back and forth in each other’s arms. “We all have our talents. I’ve accomplished much, doing that and more.”

“This one yet lives,” one Moonstar announced to another, who hastened across the high-vaulted and now blood-spattered room in Candlekeep, slipping on the rubble underfoot.

On all sides, glum-faced Moonstars were tending injured monks or moving the bodies of the dead.

“The wards gone …,” one muttered in head-shaking disbelief.

More than a few of his fellows peered at the stone walls soaring up into dimness above them, as if expecting Candlekeep to collapse on their heads without warning. Soon.

“I,” said another quietly, “find myself wondering what we should all do, after these needs have been seen to … for what is to be done, now that we’ve failed?”

“Much,” a new voice said firmly, from beyond a dark archway. A woman’s voice, but deep and rich as many a man’s. Moonstars all over the littered room looked up sharply, and more than one hand sought a sword hilt.

The speaker strode into the room, and they beheld a warrior woman, tall and broad shouldered and clad in silvery coat of plate. Her close-cropped hair was of the same hue. “If you would serve Khelben’s vision still,” she said, “and do great service to all the world, come with me now. There’s still vital work to be done.”

“And who, exactly, are you?” a Moonstar asked warily.

“I am Dove Falconhand. Of the Seven. Chosen of Mystra.”

Several Moonstars stirred, and some of their faces darkened, but before any spoke, Dove added as sternly as any battle commander, “If we are to defeat the Three Who Wait in Darkness-the very purpose for which the Moonstars were formed-we must go to Myth Drannor and fight the Shadovar there. I understand there’s no shortage of them there right now; there’ll be foes enough for each of you.”

“I lack the spells to take more than a handful of us there,” another Moonstar objected.

Dove gave that man a smile. “Portals will serve us. I know three within the keep, all of them an easy stroll from here.”

Another Moonstar frowned at her. “I’ve lived and worked in this monastery for more than thirty years, and have never seen nor heard of any working portals.”

Dove winked. “That’s what ‘secret’ means. Trust me.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then stay behind. I might well be going to my death, and would rather not have someone at my shoulder who believes not in what we must do now.”

“And what’s that?”

“Die cheerfully, fighting hard, so our world may survive,” Dove replied. “I know bards talk like that all the time, but I don’t. I mean every word. And I’m not waiting. So stay, or come.” And she turned and strode back through the archway.

Moonstars looked at each other doubtfully. Then one of them rose, drew his sword, and hurried after Dove.

Then another.

And another.

Then two in unison, swiftly followed by another pair, and then by the rest, in a sudden rush.

Leaving just one Moonstar, who gazed around the room surveying the corpses and the wounded monks, sighed, and announced to the empty air, “I’ll miss this place.”

He walked through the archway, following his fellow Moonstars. “Will the bards sing songs about us, I wonder?” he asked himself.

A few slow, faltering paces later, he stopped long enough to ask, “And if I’m dead, how will I ever get to hear them?”

Another pair of grand and firmly closed crypt doors, and another baelnorn standing in grim guardianship before them, bared longsword in hand. The long, slender blade was studded with clear-cut gems that winked as the baelnorn lifted the war steel, facing the three Netherese as they strolled up to it.

“I am Prince Mattick, and this is my brother, Prince Vattick. We are Tanthuls of Thultanthar,” Mattick announced almost jovially. “You won’t have heard of us, but that matters not. Surrender or be destroyed.”

He didn’t bother to mention the lone surviving arcanist with them, but neither that Shadovar nor the baelnorn seemed to mind.

“I am the guardian of House Hualarydnym,” it announced calmly. “I shall not surrender.”

“You surprise me not,” Vattick drawled, and lifted a finger, unleashing a roaring spell that howled around the doors of the Hualarydnym crypt like two talon-headed emerald serpents, then plunged through the seams around them-and exploded with a last ear-clawing bellow.

The doors shattered and burst outward, huge stony shards stabbing right through the baelnorn from behind. The other shards, large and small, hurtled past the guardian for a moment or two, then curved around in the air, every one of them, to race back at the baelnorn, impaling it from all sides.

Vattick’s catlike smirk widened into a broad smile of delight as they watched the sharp stone fragments speed right through the glowing guardian, but leave their glows behind.

The baelnorn gasped and reeled, the magical auras the stone shards had borne now protruding from it in an ungainly, bristling array. It looked like a fitfully glowing, stumbling parody of a porcupine.

The guardian took several shuddering steps toward them, hissing in pain … and then darkened, gasping out puffs of glowing unlife as it sank into crouching, trembling agony.

And died, falling into a collapse of fading nothingness.

“Down after the first blow,” Mattick remarked approvingly. “Nicely done.”

“It’s all this tomb magic we’ve been drinking,” Vattick replied, beaming. “They crafted magic well; I’ll give them that, these ancient elves.”

He looked down at the stretch of scorched but empty smooth stone where the baelnorn had been, shook his head, and strode through the ravaged entrance of the crypt.

House Hualarydnym had not been a fertile family. Either that, or most of its fallen had been interred elsewhere. There was magic, right enough, but not much of it.

Mattick scowled. “Hardly worth the spell you spent on the door guard,” he said to Vattick.

Who shrugged, still smiling, and replied, “That was one baelnorn-reaping I enjoyed.”

“Hunh,” was Mattick’s eloquent reply to that, as he led the way back out into the passage. Vattick chuckled, but the lone arcanist left carefully said nothing at all, even when Mattick turned and glowered at him.

The passage wound its way around massive tree roots that protruded from the ceiling and descended into the floor like the sloping, half-buried bodies of gigantic snakes. Then the tunnel-like way started to ascend, until Mattick could see leaf-dappled daylight and hear the distant din of battle. Its walls held no more doors.

“Damned longears,” the prince growled. “They can’t have built a city this big with just the families we’ve found so far; there have to be more crypts-but the passages that lead to them could be anywhere. And if we follow this one to the light, we’ll soon be up to our necks in squalling elves trying to lash us with spells we’ve never learned any counters to! While we blunder about in the heart of a battle searching for ways back down again! Shar spit!”

“She does, I’ll grant,” Vattick agreed, “and a trifle too often for my pleasure, but as it happens, we don’t face the doom you fear. Father didn’t want us to run out of crypts so soon.”

Mattick swung around sharply. “What?”

The silent arcanist deftly stepped to one side, eyes downcast.

Vattick watched the Shadovar’s maneuver with obvious amusement before he met Mattick’s gaze again, and said gravely, “The Most High impressed a map of sorts into my mind. I know where other nearby crypts can be found.”

Mattick stared at his brother in still silence, a deepening frown spreading across his face. Both the last arcanist and Prince Vattick knew, as clearly as if he’d shouted the words, that he was thinking “Why Vattick and not me?”

Mattick said nothing, however, until he abruptly turned away and flung back over his shoulder curtly, “Tell me, Brother: Did the Most High share anything else with you that you’ve neglected to mention until now? Orders, perhaps?”

Vattick’s laugh was brief and harsh. “No, Brother. On that, you can trust me.”

Those words fell like stones into a bottomless well of deepening silence as Mattick strode to the nearest tree root and bounced a clenched fist off it, making no reply.

When he turned around again, Vattick was strolling back down the passage the way they’d come, the arcanist walking uncertainly in his wake.

Mattick swallowed a growl and hastened to catch up.

Rocks and trees unrolled swiftly below. The breeze was stiff, and the clouds scudded like ships driven by a gale; Thultanthar was flying at speed.

“It won’t be long now,” Aglarel commented, leaning out between two merlons to peer ahead, though he knew they were still too far away to see any sign of Myth Drannor in the great sweep of Faerûn spread out below and ahead.

His father didn’t bother to reply.

Or rather, as Aglarel saw a moment later, the Most High’s attention was fixed on something in the air above them.

A black line where there should be none, in the hitherto-empty sky.

A line swiftly broadening into a dark rift-that became a black star, low overhead and seemingly of about the same size as the many-spired city flying beneath it, a star that for just a moment seemed to be one dark, coldly knowing, somehow feminine eye.

It was an orb Aglarel felt would freeze his heart if it happened to turn and gaze upon him, and he knew the deity it belonged to was aware of him-knowledge that made his heart sink into deeper despair, in that instant, than he’d ever felt in his life before.

Shar was manifesting in midair to his father. This must be urgent.

“How can you be so patient?” Amarune burst out. “The world may be shattered before nightfall, and you’re sitting there calmly reading recipes!”

“Not calmly,” Arclath whispered, looking up from the heap of old books he’d fetched down off dusty shelves onto Storm’s kitchen table, and she saw that his hands were shaking. “Just feigning calm. Something nobles are taught young. Pretend to be calm, keep your true emotions off your face, and cultivate patience.”

“Thank the gods I’m not noble!”

“Ah, but you are now.” Lord Arclath Delcastle set the book aside and rose to go to his lady and embrace her. The look he gave her, once they were in each other’s arms, was more grim than grave. “And if there’s someone in this room who must learn patience to keep the world from being shattered, probably many times in the years ahead of us, it’s you, Rune. Haven’t you noticed that it’s one of Elminster’s best weapons?”

“No. I guess all the kingdom-shattering spell-hurling he does distracted me.”

“Misdirection,” Arclath replied, with the faintest ghost of a smile, “is another of his best weapons. That and his sense of humor.”

Rune gave him a dark look, and warned, “Don’t you say one word, Lord Delcastle, about how I’m related to him, and have inherited this or that. Just don’t.”

“All right, I won’t.” Arclath smoothly disengaged her clasping arms, returned to the table, and said, “There’s an interesting recipe here for turtle soup-”

And being noble, he watched anyone standing near out of the corner of his eye, and so was ready to duck aside as she hurled a handy onion at him.

The great black eye floating in the sky above the flying city blinked. It and its dark rays and the rift they had appeared through were all gone in an instant, and bright sun banished the temporary gloom that had fallen on the battlements.

Sunlight that lit the High Prince of Thultanthar like a torch as he turned to Aglarel in sudden haste.

“Go,” he ordered, “and fetch my herald. Don’t hurry.”

His most loyal son bowed and backed away, but was taken aback and didn’t try to hide it. “Your herald? Who-?”

“The arcanist Gwelt,” Telamont snapped. “Go.”

Aglarel turned away, cloak swirling. “Since when have you had a herald?” he muttered, as he hastened away.

The Most High shrugged. “I’ve always needed one,” he replied, knowing his magic would take that quiet reply to his son’s ears.

Then he strode down a stair and along a passage, passed through a door and spell-sealed it behind him with the wave of a hand, and hurried to his innermost spellchamber.

He sealed its doors too, warding himself within a room that was colder and darker than it should be.

When he turned around from the doors, she was waiting for him.

There’d been a secret door in the wall of the passage just outside the doors of the second crypt they’d plundered. The time-worn stone steps beyond had come up inside a hollow tree-or rather, the crumbling stump of a long-dead and fallen shadowtop, the roofless room inside its ring as large around as a good-sized turret.

Vattick worked a disguising spell on himself without slowing that left him looking like an elf high mage, and his brother and the lone surviving arcanist hastened to follow suit. Vattick seemed to know the way onward unerringly. He went to a cleft in the stump, stepping through it into a drift of dead leaves as if walking along a passage he took every day.

Mattick and the arcanist kept close behind him, as they strode past armed elves rushing here and there through the trees, the drifting smoke of a fire, and the screams and clangor of battle that wasn’t far off at all.

They strode along like men bent on business, who had every right to be there, ignoring all elves and walking with brisk purpose. Soon enough they ducked between two old and mighty duskwoods and down into a passage so old its ceiling had collapsed, leaving it as a deep trench in the forest, open to the sky-yet shielded by the thick forest canopy high overhead, and here and there by the small trunks of fallen saplings and the living nets of forest creepers.

Vattick led the way as sure-footedly as if the rotten-leaf-strewn ditch was very familiar, and soon enough it curved to the right and angled down underground into darkness. Dirt-and-root walls soon gave way to stone every bit as ancient as the underways they’d been traversing from crypt to crypt earlier.

Ahead, something ghostly and deep blue glided into their path, to bar their way.

Vattick never slowed, even when all three elf high mage disguises melted from them to the accompaniment of a hiss of disgust from the guardian ahead.

“So, what family bones do you guard?” he asked it cheerfully.

“Human, you intrude upon the resting place of House Alavalae,” the baelnorn replied coldly. “Halt, and go back, or face mortal peril.”

“Indeed,” Vattick smiled-and let fly with the same spell he’d used on the last guardian. Not at the doors of a crypt, this time, but at the baelnorn itself, two talon-headed serpents of emerald force that the guardian countered almost casually, with some sort of barrier that held the prince’s spell at bay in front of it, writhing and clawing and spitting emerald fury in all directions.

Vattick waved to his twin as if he was directing him to a seat at a feast table-and Mattick strode forward with a smile whose malice would have done credit to any ruthless wolf, and unleashed some of the magic he’d drained from the crypts of Myth Drannor.

His ravening magical fire snarled around in a great arc to stab at the undead guardian from behind.

It backed away hastily to avoid being caught between two destroying spells at once-but the doors it was bound to guard were all too near, robbing it of space enough to flee into.

Its blue glow seemed to catch fire, going red and emerald green and then boiling up inky black-until it managed some sort of more powerful warding, and forced the princes’ contemptuously hurled magics back.

That was when the arcanist dared to step forward and add his spell to the fray, a careful casting that shattered the warding, consuming itself in doing so.

The spells the twin princes had cast crashed in on the guardian from either side-and it winked out of visibility, letting the spells crash together and roil angrily in midair.

When they were spent, the last force rolling away from their meeting to strike the walls and rebound, like a wave striking a rocky shore, the guardian faded back into visibility-much closer to the three Shadovar than it had been before.

Mattick spat a curse and Vattick ducked hastily aside as he worked a spell, but the baelnorn had guarded this spot for centuries, and had made some preparations. It spread hands that pulsed with blue fire-and flat, sharp-edged stones burst free of the walls all around and whirled at the human trio like whirling blades.

Scores of stones, a volley that Mattick and Vattick flung themselves to the floor to try to survive, arms cradling their heads.

The arcanist wasn’t swift enough in joining them. He staggered, his skull shattered and his arms and ribs breaking with sickening thuds under the barrage of piercing stone … and then he fell over backward, his throat crushed and his head lolling limply.

The stones flashed through the air with unabated force, ricocheting off one another and the walls amid deafening krrracks and sprays of small shards as one after another broke apart. They flashed through the baelnorn without doing it any harm, but the two groaning, crawling princes of Thultanthar weren’t so lucky.

Vattick finally managed to cast something that flung all the stones at the ceiling, then sent them racing at the floor, and then back at the ceiling again. At each thunderous meeting of hurtling stone with immoveable floor or ceiling, more shatterings spat clouds of curling dust and sprays of pebble-like shards everywhere.

And then, at last, it was done, and Mattick and Vattick surged painfully to their feet, teeth clenched, and advanced on the baelnorn.

Who gave them a serene smile, and worked the same magic again.

This time, Mattick-who’d half suspected such a tactic, for all his snarling rage-had enough warning to work a strong ward shield. Vattick’s went up more slowly, but protected him against the worst whirling shards-and when the second stone storm died away, he did something that caught the baelnorn by surprise.

He gave his own ward shield a slicing edge of pure force, and slashed the undead guardian with it, as if it was a great drover’s whip.

Causing the baelnorn to waver, leaking blue fire in all directions and reeling back-right into Mattick’s flames of the sun spell, that made its undeath burn like a pyre.

It blazed up with a sudden roar, and was gone before the two princes could draw another breath.

Mattick and Vattick regarded each other sourly over the last wisps of the vanishing baelnorn. They were both bruised, cut, and bleeding, their contempt for elves gone and anger in its place.

“You look like an arcanist who’s just won his first spell duel by sheer luck,” Mattick panted.

Vattick nodded grimly, and spent some of the elven magic they’d drained on a healing that left him gasping, trembling, and leaking blue fire from his dozens of cuts-but standing straighter and freed from pain when it was done.

Mattick did the same thing. Then they both looked back at the sprawled corpse of the last arcanist, with his shattered hands dangling from his splintered wrists, shrugged in unison, and turned to the now-unguarded doors of House Alavalae. Two rampant pegasi faced each other, wings and hooves raised, but neither of the twin princes was in the mood to appreciate skilled elven sculpting.

They each flung out a hand and sent blasting blue fire at the doors. The stone shuddered, wavered, and swung open a trifle.

Vattick sidestepped as he advanced, and sent another spell against the now-exposed lip of one of the doors, driving it fully open with a heavy grinding rumble.

Revealing a line-no, a wall-of blue fire in the dim interior of the crypt. Literally heaps of magic.

“Ah,” Mattick purred, striding eagerly forward, “that’s more like it.”

Vattick hastened too. Only for the blue fire to fall away like a cascade of spilled water, revealing the grim-faced Coronal of Myth Drannor flanked by a quartet of elf mages.

Without wasting a word on greeting, parley, or challenge, they all hurled ravening spells into the faces of the twin princes of Shade.

The purple-eyed face hanging in the darkness was almost as large as the wall Telamont could no longer see behind it, and was wreathed in restlessly whipping and coiling black tresses like the tentacles of the giant octopi sometimes called “the Devourers of the Deeps.” Shar’s choice to give that face the features of one of Telamont’s first loves, dead and gone centuries ago, was merely her usual cruelty; that she’d chosen to manifest in person to speak to him rather than her usual mindspeech in his head was a measure of her fury. Even her nimbus of awful darkness wasn’t as bone chilling as usual, thanks to the warmth of her anger.

“Both of your agents have failed,” the goddess told her servant coldly. “For all their training, they accomplished little. So now, amuse me: try to justify your failure in Candlekeep.”

“I cannot justify, Mistress of the Night,” Telamont said swiftly, “but I can explain. Even without Maerandor, our agents among the Avowed could, I believe, have accomplished what we intended and overcome our enemies among the monks, had not an unforeseen power moved against us.”

“The meddler Elminster was not unforeseen,” Shar snapped. “He is always present, at nigh every great play of power in Toril, outside of Thay, these last four centuries. Such is the chaos he wreaks that I never send servitors directly against him, for time and again he furthers discord, and visits loss, despair, and destruction on many, better than those sworn to me. Prate not to me of Elminster.”

Telamont Tanthul dared to raise his voice to his goddess. “I did not presume to blame Elminster, and do not. By ‘unforeseen power,’ I meant the one called Larloch. The Last Chosen of Mystryl.”

“Who has never deserved that title, but let it pass. Why did you not foresee his involvement? I expected it.”

“I, too, anticipated that he would take a hand-but I foresaw that he’d work through his servitor liches, to seize what books and items of magic could be stolen amid the chaos, as he’s reported to have often done in the past. I had no idea he’d try to seize the power of the wards of Candlekeep for his own, to share the folly of the most crazed arcanists of Netheril and try to make himself into a god!”

“The wards of Candlekeep might make a toad or a pixie a guardian demigod of Candlekeep, but no more.”

Telamont shook his head. “Larloch goes now to Myth Drannor, or is there already, seeking to snatch its mythal. With that much power, he seeks to remake the Weave and root it in himself, and so ascend.”

“That, I did not foresee,” Shar admitted, her words rolling across the room as if from a great distance. “So, Telamont Tanthul, your fear tells me you believe he can achieve this. That he is likely to achieve this.”

Telamont started to pace, cursing softly under his breath without thinking, though his every oath was an insult barbed against Shar. The coldness around him seemed somehow amused as his profanity faltered, then quickly gave way to an admission.

“The archlich has always been stronger in the Art than I am- possibly stronger than all the massed arcanists of this city, even without the liches who serve him. Goading him out of his seclusion and researches by the bold actions we’ve taken was always a risk … which we’re now facing.”

“You don’t seem to relish the coming confrontation, High Prince of Thultanthar.”

“No,” Telamont whispered fiercely, turning away.

Not that it was possible to turn his back on the Mistress of the Night, in a chamber filled with her dark presence.

What do you seek to run from, Telamont Tanthul? Her whisper was far louder and more terrible than his, seeming to sigh through his head like a tidal wave racing across hard-day’s ride after hard-day’s ride of unprotected fields.

“Goddess,” the ruler of the Shadovar mumbled miserably, “I am afraid of Larloch.”

“Fear is the lash, the goad,” Shar told him, as gently as any mother. “Freeze and cower not when it descends on you, but embrace it, and know me more closely, and use the fear you feel to spur you to greater service.”

Telamont winced, nodding but still hunched, his teeth set.

“Show me your mettle, High Prince. Show me why I should still rely on you to serve me.”

The clear warning in those last words took Telamont by the throat and shook him out of his dark fear.

He straightened, flung out an arm as if he could dash down mountains with it, and snapped, “Your intentions are not thwarted by the archlich, Divine One. If I can drain the mythal before Larloch can, it should be power enough to raise the Shadow Weave.”

“It should,” Shar agreed, her approval an arm of warm darkness that seemed to wrap around his shoulders amid silent thunder.

“See that you succeed,” she added, drawing away again.

“H-have you any instructions?” Telamont asked quickly, sensing Shar’s presence receding.

“No one is unexpendable, Telamont, son of Harathroven,” the goddess warned softly, as if from a great distance.

And with that, she was gone, leaving the Most High of Thultanthar standing alone in empty darkness, sweating and pale.

“This-this is utter chaos!” a Moonstar protested, white faced in revulsion. Amid the trees, the smoke of countless fires drifted, some of them reeking pyres of the dead. Bodies were heaped and strewn everywhere, swarming flies buzzed, and from all sides arose the clangor, shouts, and shrieks of battle.

“Do as yon elves are doing,” Dove commanded over her shoulder, as she strode toward the nearest skirmish, sword drawn. “Slay all non-elves you see attacking elves, or advancing to the heart of Myth Drannor.”

“Yes,” another Moonstar agreed, espying a good blade among the fallen and snatching it up to heft and swing experimentally, “but who are all these warriors? Whence came they here?”

“From all over Sembia, and Inner Sea ports where the Shadovar sent ships and recruiters,” Dove replied. “It seems the Thultanthans never foresaw their command of the siege of Myth Drannor could slip from ‘absolute,’ and so gave their hirelings no battle cries to shout to keep friendly steel from butchering allies.”

“So this siege has become an utter confusion of scattered skirmishes,” a third Moonstar said disgustedly. “Yet the hireswords seem endless.”

“Seem endless,” Dove replied. “Ever planted seedlings? No tossing and walking on; you must root and tamp every one, one after another, until the task is done. The hewing of mercenaries must be like that for us, if this siege is to be broken. One after another, and just keep at it until the task is done. If-”

She was interrupted by a ragged shout, as a dozen human warriors in motley armor came crashing hastily through saplings and dead leaves, waving swords and spears and axes.

“Let’s start with these handy targets,” Dove added cheerfully, and strode to meet them, dagger in one hand and long and ready blade in the other.

Moonstars hesitated-but Dove waded cheerfully into the fray, one woman alone against the dozen. Steel clanged on steel; she danced and ducked and sprang like a festival tumbler, and it was mercenaries who fell, not the lone woman darting about in their midst. “Surrender and be spared,” she chanted in their faces as she parried hard enough that sparks flew, and dealt death. “Surrender and be spared!”

The last few mercenaries fled from her, crashing wildly through the forest, but the din of their flight was drowned out by the arrival of more of the besieging army, from two directions through the trees-hundreds of them.

They came on at a trot, flooding through the saplings, swarming up and around Dove, who never faltered in her demands that they surrender, though they closed in around her, thrusting and hacking viciously. Several Moonstars rushed to her aid, charging determinedly through all the offered steel, but others yelled, “Fall back!” or just hastened away.

More warriors came through the trees, scores of them, and it wasn’t long before a Moonstar fell. And then another.

Even Dove was being driven back by the sheer force of new arrivals, charging in to try to get at her, their rush shoving back the forefront of the bloody fray.

A high, clear horncall rang out through the trees, and suddenly there were elves darting in among the mercenaries, their long swords gleaming.

A Moonstar reared up, transfixed by two mercenary blades, shrieking in agony-and right beside him, as he crashed down in his last fall, choking on his own blood, an elf charge swept away most of the Shadovar forces surrounding Dove and the handful of Moonstars standing with her.

And came at Dove and those Moonstars with the same slaying ferocity that they’d shown to the besiegers.

Dove thrust them away with a swift spell, shouting, “Can you not tell friend from foe?”

Whatever reply the elves she was facing might have tried to make was lost in another horncall, this one three notes winded at once.

The signal for a retreat.

In an instant, the elves fell back again, running back into the trees. After a wavering moment, the besiegers let out a ragged chorus of yells and went after them.

Leaving Dove and her Moonstars behind, forgotten.

She peered through the trees, grimacing. The elves were surrendering more and more of their city.

Given what she knew of their pride, their ranks must have been thinned indeed, worn down in this siege, for this to happen.

“Well?” one of the Moonstars asked, looking to her.

“Aye, what now?” asked another, wiping at blood that was streaming down the side of his face. “Where shall we throw our lives away?”

Dove snorted like a horse in dismissal of his words, but had no others to give him.

“So pass two princes of Thultanthar,” the Coronal of Myth Drannor said bitterly. “Would that they had kept to their own city and their own Art, and left ours alone. What they’ve destroyed can never be replaced … like so much of what all Tel’Quess have lost, these last few centuries.”

She turned away from the smoking ashes of what had been Mattick and Vattick Tanthul, and signaled wordlessly to one of the high mages. He bowed and obeyed, beginning to cast an intricate spell over the remains of their fallen foes that would ensure no one successfully brought them back to life or unlife.

His three fellow mages turned to obey commands she’d given earlier, resealing the crypt of House Alavalae.

Ilsevele Miritar, the Coronal of Myth Drannor, watched them, and sighed. How long would it be before the next tomb robbers came down this passage, bent on taking what they could and destroying all that was left of a proud elf family?

They had won this battle, but it didn’t feel like any sort of victory.

The mages all looked to her, their castings done.

“Come,” she commanded softly, and led the way along the passage. There was another crypt, around two bends of the way ahead, and these plunderers might have sent others …

They found its doors intact, but the door warden of House Felaeraun was a flickering blue flame in the passage before them, weeping inconsolably.

“Gone!” was all they could get out of the baelnorn. “Gone!”

At a gesture from their coronal, two of the high mages unsealed the doors with careful spells, working gently-and just as gently, opened the doors wide.

Into still darkness.

The last resting place of House Felaeraun had been drained from within. All of its honored dead were now dust, their magic gone.