The Herald

CHAPTER 18

Dove shook her head. It was no use. She’d remembered the entire spell, she was sure-but nothing had happened. Whatever baelnorn still guarded their crypts somewhere beneath her would remain there. She’d have to do this alone.

As usual.

And her luck was turning for the worse. Also as usual.

She’d cast a look back to see if any of the Moonstars were following her-they weren’t, only gawping in bewilderment at her sudden sprint across the landscape-and had seen that someone else was following her.

The big beholder who’d been hovering above the wounded black dragon happily slaying Shadovar mercenaries was drifting in her direction, eyestalks writhing menacingly.

And though she couldn’t place from where, the creature seemed somehow familiar.

“Stars and spells, Mother!” Dove cursed aloud, “why now? How is it that monsters are here-here in the farruking mythal-guarded heart of Myth Drannor-to settle old scores, right in the midst of the elves’ latest last stand?”

And with those words, running as hard as ever, she plunged over the edge.

Down into the dell, a green and pleasant place. There were the elves, the youngest sobbing in fear, and-

There they were, the pursuers. Wearing broad and arrogant grins as they came, striding unhurriedly, enjoying this. Two tall and muscular shades, twins-and Tanthuls, by the looks of them!

“Well, now,” she panted aloud. “Princes of Shade! I’m honored. I think.”

She’d be able to get between the two and the fleeing elves; that was what mattered. As she hastened to do that, Dove cast a swift look back over her shoulder, and saw what she’d expected to see.

The beholder didn’t have to run over uneven ground or down steep slopes, and had glided serenely closer. The baleful gaze of its central eye was fixed on her.

“Hunh,” she gasped at it. “Wait your turn.”

And then she had no more breath to speak, because damned if these two running princes of Shade hadn’t sped up, to try to run past before she could reach them.

Dove sprinted beyond breathlessness, putting on a burst of speed that left her staggering as they came rushing up, swinging their swords.

She ducked, feinted with her hips, saw the foremost shade’s gaze follow her movement, swung her sword aloft to distract him further-and threw a perfect cross-body block across his midriff.

They slammed together like two charging bulls, Dove’s hip sinking deep into a yielding gut-and the prince went helplessly cartwheeling.

Whereupon the other shade gleefully ran her through.

His steel felt like ice inside her, but he made the mistake of twisting his blade to do her more agony, rather than pulling it out of her to use again, making sure of her death. Instead, he turned the hilt sadistically as he made a sneering speech.

“I am Prince Vattick of Thultanthar, and your doom! So tell me, foolish wench, who are you?”

Dove kept her feet moving, and clawed her way up his blade before he could withdraw it. Which meant she was close enough to use the sharpest and strongest run of her own sword, the length just above the hilt. Her first slash almost took the prince’s free hand off, and while he was busy screaming about that, she chopped at his sword hand.

Prince Vattick of Thultanthar promptly lost his grip on his blade, which meant she could lurch back far enough to swing-and slice his head off.

She turned, as it bounced in the dust, wearing a look of pained disbelief, to see what had become of the other prince, but the agony flaring inside her took her to her knees.

She shuddered, still impaled on the dead prince’s sword, the sword that was now propping her up, its point caught on the backplate of her armor.

Mother Mystra, but it hurt!

The air above her darkened.

Of course.

Dove looked up through the welling pain. The beholder loomed above her, its wide and many-toothed smile gloating. “Dove Falconhand,” it hissed, “do you remember me?”

She did, but still couldn’t recall its name.

And then she did. “Glormorglulla,” she gasped, her blood iron and fire in her mouth.

“The same,” the eye tyrant purred. “And do you recall our last meeting?”

“No,” she told it honestly, looking past it to try to see what had become of the fleeing elf children and elders and the other prince, but finding her vision was blurring, and everything was going dim.

She could hear screams and cries, but they sounded human, not elf.

“No,” she said again, drifting through memories she hadn’t brought to mind for a long time, but finding no scene nor recollection with Glormorglulla in it.

“You helped the accursed Elminster capture me,” the beholder spat. “With your spells, you aided him, when he lacked the might to overcome me alone. You were responsible for my imprisonment. Yet fate and chance are sometimes wondrous-and now, at long last, I shall have my revenge.”

“So be it,” Dove hissed up at it, spitting out blood and feeling more flooding up into her mouth than she could hope to swallow.

She spat hastily, and managed to ask, “I wonder if you’ll escape the curse I worked on you?”

“What curse?” the beholder asked, swooping down until its great eye towered over her. “What is this you speak of?”

It was a lie, an empty ruse, but Glormorglulla was close enough now for even her dying, agony-sapped mind to reach.

Dove glared up through the blood, and locked gazes and minds with the eye tyrant.

“Saerevros,” she murmured, and so sealed the blood lock.

The beholder could easily break free when she was dead, but until then it could win free of where she held it only if its mind could break hers.

“Not a chance,” she mumbled aloud, as the first hint of horror dawned in Glormorglulla’s fell gaze.

Dove held that dark and malevolent mind in thrall.

The eye tyrant struggled, at first furiously and then in growing terror, tugging-but failing. It couldn’t move away, and couldn’t use the powers of its eyes, thanks to her willing otherwise, but it could and did roll over and over in midair, and flail the passing breeze and her face and shoulders alike with its eyestalks.

Thrice it tried to devour her, its great jaws gaping, but she held it back with her strength of will, its fetid fangs clashing right in front of her nose as their minds wrestled.

She was dying, and her mind was weakening, and they both knew it. The frightened and furious Glormorglulla dared to hope, and anticipate, and even to gloat.

Whereupon she let it feel her full rage, and the silver fire that had started to spill from her weakening constraints.

Fire the beholder sought greedily to take from her, for was it not the fabled all-consuming power that humbled all magics? Would not an eye tyrant wielding silver fire be able to conquer all, and rule every last tree and river of Faerûn it desired?

Dove smiled bleakly into its great eye, and gave it what it wanted. Silver fire, unleashed and raging.

Rushing through the mind she was locked to, boiling and melting remorselessly, destroying so swiftly it barely had time to know true terror.

An awful reek rose around her as the malevolent beholder’s brains fried.

Until Glormorglulla could think no more.

One by one, the small orbs at the ends of its writhing eyestalks burst, popping out gooey matter and then weeping a dark ichor. Then the great eye darkened and shriveled, until it looked like the largest raisin Dove had ever seen.

About then, her mind-hold failed. She was going fast.

Dully, she watched the husk of the great eye tyrant drift aimlessly away.

Well, she’d taken down one prince. Those elf elders would have to deal with his surviving brother.

“Florin,” Dove gasped with her last breath, still draped over the sword that had slain her, tongues of silver fire blazing out between her lips. “I’m coming. Coming at last.”

Magnificence and a dream restored in the heart of the forest, the City of Song-but the song was faint and faltering now.

It had all come down to this bitter end, here in this fiery blue cleft amid a last paltry handful of spired buildings. So fair and so doomed.

“Females first,” the coronal ordered the elf knights around her briskly. “Young and old together-pair them if you can, but waste no time trying to do so.”

Blue fire lit her face in flash after flash; the pulsing blue glow of the portal was reflecting back off the knights’ armor, wherever it wasn’t covered with gore.

“Of course,” the eldest knight agreed, and spun away to see it done.

“You, you, and you,” the coronal said, pointing at other knights, “with me!” And she started to run, down along the ragged and lengthening line of children and elders, to take a stand at its end, in case the last line of defenders-pitifully few they were too-was overwhelmed.

She got there just in time. “Mages!” she called over her shoulder, and pointed at the surging besiegers, as they overbore two elves-several spears and glaives thrusting through each-and poured forward.

The coronal strode to meet them, and the knights with her grimaced and rushed to get in front of her, to shield her with their lives.

They were still a few strides apart from the foremost mercenaries when the elf line broke in another place. With a ragged roar of triumph, the Shadovar-hired mercenaries charged, heading around the coronal and her handful so they could fall upon the largely undefended line of children and elders.

The coronal turned and rushed to intercept them. “Old lives for young!” she cried to the loyal elves running with her. “Win a future for our younglings with our own blood!”

As she chose the highest ground, to stop and make her stand, Ilsevele Miritar saw that she’d been shouting to only six Tel’Quess-and the grinning and eager foe closing on them were beyond counting.

Yet the slope between her and the human hireswords was suddenly shrouded in blue-green mist. A spell, obviously, but not one she recognized. Nothing the handful of high mages here could cast, of that she was sure.

The mercenaries boiled up the hill-but out of the ground in front of their boots, up through the coiling mists, rose a line of baelnorn.

Tall and gaunt and terrible, eyes aglow and withered bodies clutching long curved swords and scepters that shone with risen magic.

“Dove hath called, and we answer,” the tallest of them announced, and raised her scepter.

The line of blue-white fire smashed a dozen mercenaries as if a stone had been dashed into a heap of raw eggs. Torn bodies flew through the air, and the screaming began. Then other scepters spat, and the slaughter really began.

Sapphire-blue hair swirled, dark eyes blazed, and the lone petite elf slashed with a sword that was not there, a bloody edge of sharp force sweeping through the air and cleaving flesh, bone, armor and blade alike.

It cut a bloody swath through shouting, shrieking mercenaries-and then she was gone, darting like a hummingbird across the glade to thrust and slice anew.

This time she swooped and stabbed among arcanists, haughty and bewildered shades of Tultanthar who, until a moment ago, had been relaxing in the secure knowledge that they were far in the rear of the besieging army, on the winning side, with not a foe who could reach them anywhere near.

“Who the-?” one arcanist shouted, watching the diminutive figure dart away again through the trees.

“Blast it down, whatever it is!” snarled another. “Quickly, or-”

He’d meant to say before this unlooked-for solo attacker was out of range and lost to them in the endless trees of the deep forest, but before he could frame the words, she was back, and he saw what he was facing.

A small and shapely female elf, brows and hair of sapphire, clingingly clad in high soft leather boots and a leather harness of indigo hue. Whose hands seemed empty, yet sliced as if she swung a weightless, invisible sword four times as long as her slender arm, and whose eyes were ablaze with anger.

She looked … splendid, he had to concede. Her beauty was the last thing he saw, before his own blood blinded him, cloven skull and nose cut open and much of his face torn bloodily off in the wake of her slash.

Her unseen blade claimed the throat of the arcanist standing beside him, and several fingers from the next Thultanthan beyond, and then she was gone again into the trees, swooping and darting.

Not that he could see her, choking on his own blood and going down. He bounced as he hit the ground, and the pain was enough to jolt him to his senses for long enough to hear the oldest arcanist in the glade shout, “The Srinshee! It’s their undead ruler, or whatever she is! Every arcanist still standing, to me! To me now!”

That bellow ended in a rough, wordless scream that cut off abruptly.

It was replaced by something loud and booming and teeth-jarringly deep-the roar of a large and angry dragon.

It, too, ended with brutal suddenness, rising into a yip of startled pain.

The Srinshee didn’t unleash herself often, but right now was one of those rare times.

Prince Mattick Tanthul was two ridges away, slowing warily as he saw more and more high mages and baelnorn between himself and those elf children. They were no longer easy kills.

He turned and sought higher ground, the natural refuge of the close-clustered trunks of soaring shadowtops where he could catch his breath and take a good look around.

He was still a few panting breaths from reaching them when he saw a thousand-some mercenaries coming out of the trees in a huge flood of armored humans, heading for that last beleaguered cluster of elves.

Well, it should be a short slaughter, but an entertaining one.

And then he saw something cleaving a furrow through all those hireswords, something too small to be easily seen, yet as devastating as a swooping dragon. He blinked at all the screaming and the reeling, falling dead. Was it a spell? If so, from where, and what magic could do this-and cast by whom?

He certainly couldn’t wreak that sort of havoc with just one spell. Yet perhaps it was a succession of identical magics, cast along the same path, and-

Then he saw it-no, her. A tiny flying figure, impossibly blue hair streaming out behind her in a streaming tail, wheeling in the air at the end of the great channel of death she’d just sliced through an army, and now plunging right back into the armored ranks, just behind the foremost mercenaries, cleaving through them and leaving a chaos of dying and maimed men behind.

He saw an arcanist blast at her with a spell, down the trail of the dead in her wake. His magic rebounded on him, hurling him broken limbed and limp into the nearest tree, while his flying target hacked and hewed her way on.

Prince Mattick of Thultanthar swallowed, shook his head-and just turned and ran.

The courtyard was eerily quiet. Only the fast-scudding clouds betrayed the fact that Thultanthar was flying through the air in a killing plummet beneath all their feet.

The vast and usually open space was crowded, seemingly filled with robed and cowled pillars standing almost shoulder to shoulder: the assembled arcanists of the city. Each of them held still, in the precise spot chosen for him or her by the Most High, and every face was set with the strain of intense concentration.

Telamont’s great draining magic was underway, and the fear and awe the younger arcanists felt at being part of such a meld, working in concert with so many other minds of power, was starting to subside as the dark and driving force of the Most High’s will really took hold.

Overhead and all around, in the hitherto empty air, an impossibly complex and glowing tangle slowly faded into view, lines of racing white fire tinged with gold, ever changing but growing steadily brighter.

The Weave had become a visible thing.

From high windows all over the city, lesser Thultanthans exclaimed in startled wonder as the shining network spread. Filling the sky above the city and stretching into vast distances through the clouds and everywhere below-including the white spires ahead, poking through the great green carpet of trees that marked the heart of embattled Myth Drannor.

And along those strands of racing force, leaping up from those spires, rose a thin, soft, high-pitched, ethereal song. Singing that swelled, mournful and defiant.

As the baelnorn who’d guarded elf crypts for so long fought the hiresword army converging on the last few spires of the city still in elf hands, the elf dead in their now unguarded tombs beneath Myth Drannor were singing.

The City of Shadow was coming to the City of Song.

“Well,” Elminster growled, as they reeled away from the sighing collapse of a half-magical pillar, breaking the human triangle they’d formed around it, “at least they’re hurting less, with each one we destroy.”

Laeral gave him a smile. “Stop looking so worried, El. This either works-or it doesn’t. If we fail, we’ve done the best we could. And at least we haven’t done nothing.”

“Which is how so much evil crawls unchecked in this world for so long,” Alustriel put in. “Good folk tending to their own lives and concerns, and doing nothing for their neighbors, their villages, their realms. Leaving the hard and distasteful work for someone else.”

“Aye,” El grunted. “Us.”

“How many anchors is that now? I’ve lost count,” Alustriel asked.

Laeral grinned. “Is now a good time to admit I’ve never been able to keep track of coins, or numbers of any sort, above about seven at once?”

El grinned at her. “A serious failing in a ruler, I’d say. And one that I share.”

Laeral turned to her sister. “Well, High Lady of Silverymoon? And whatever-they-called-you, of Luruar?”

Alustriel gave her a wry look. “I generally lose count somewhere around forty-odd. And we passed that many anchors destroyed, long ago. Speaking of which, the next one is over that way, about-” She broke off, her face changing, and asked, “What’s that?”

They could all feel it. A tugging in the air, an invisible pull rising in its silently tremulous force. It clawed at them, seeming to want to drag them up into the air, angling up into the sky, northward.

Up to the floating stone city of Thultanthar, now hanging tall and dark in the sky, still drifting closer.

“They want the mythal, those arcanists,” Elminster said, peering up at the city, then down at its spreading shadow over the trees. “Perhaps we should give it to them.”

“Not freely, I take it,” Laeral said dryly.

“Oh, freely indeed-but all at once, in a rush, like a great fist of force. Mayhap we could shatter it.”

“Quite a rain of destruction that would be,” Alustriel commented, peering up at the dark stone city. “You think we can manage it?”

El sighed. “No. No, I don’t, though I wish I could answer thee otherwise.”

“Take too long?” Laeral asked softly. “Might go awry?”

“Both of those,” the Sage of Shadowdale said shortly. “Take too much crucial time, I’m almost certain … so this draining magic may well succeed.”

“Ignore it, El,” Alustriel counseled grimly. “Let’s just go on destroying anchors. You can’t be everywhere, do everything, and save everyone-and you should have stopped trying centuries ago.”

“And how much less fun would that have been?” Laeral countered. “For old weirdbeard here and all the rest of Faerûn?”

“Ah,” her sister granted, nodding her head and letting her long silver tresses writhe and swirl freely about her shoulders. “You have a point there. That many have felt the sharp end of these last twelve centuries or so.”

“Or so?”

Alustriel grinned and shrugged. “As I said, I lose count.”

“I wish I could,” Elminster whispered fervently, and stalked off in the direction of the next anchor.

The two sisters exchanged worried glances and followed.

With their every step, the tugging grew stronger.

Storm Silverhand trudged past perhaps her sixteen thousandth tree of the day, reeling on her feet with weariness. She was alone and blood drenched and trailing her sword, glad of the wrist thong that tethered it to her numbed sword hand.

Was there no end to these Shadovar-hired mercenaries? She’d slain hundreds herself, today, and clambered over thousands slain by others-and they were still as thick as the swarming blowflies, coming through the trees by their dozens and scores and even hundreds.

As if her thoughts had alerted a lot of someones that their battlefield cue was upon them, she saw sunlight glinting off bright armor in the trees.

She sighed and started looking around for a good place to make a stand. Against the broad trunk of yon duskwood would have to do …

By the time she reached it, her foes were out in the open, walking steadily toward her in a wedge of gleaming shields, helms, and armor. No spears or glaives, but plenty of long swords and battle-axes. Fresh troops, hundreds of them.

And at their head strode two warriors who must have been seven feet tall and three feet across at their shoulders-half-orcs or half-giants or some such; it was hard to see their features through their menacing beak-faced war helms. Between them walked a young Shadovar arcanist in his robes, his face as haughty as any Zhentarim or Red Wizard Storm had ever met.

“Well met, elf-lover,” he greeted her. “If you beg for your life, I might spare you for a time. Long enough to serve as a reward for those under my command here who fight outstandingly today. But I warn you, you must choose your fate right now. We’re in a hurry; if we tarry, there might not be any elves left.”

Leaning on her sword with the duskwood at her back, Storm gave him a wintry smile. “An interesting bargain, Thultanthan, but I offer you a different one. There’s been enough killing this day. Surrender or depart, and I’ll spare you.”

The arcanist gaped at her, then sneered. “You presume to try to stop me?”

“It’s what I do,” Storm told him grimly, and started to stalk toward him, sword raised.

Contemptuously he cast slaying lightning at her-only to see it meet a sudden gout of silver fire from her mouth. It spiraled around that silvern flame, into her, and she hissed in pain-but kept right on striding.

Before he could do anything else, she sprang, a great swing of her blade sending one of his gigantic bodyguards sprawling. She came down in a squat and launched herself at the other one, who swung his blade in time to meet hers in midair with a great clang and shower of sparks, and spill her to the ground on her behind.

On her way down, her sword flicked out-and sliced off all the fingers on one of the arcanist’s hands.

He screamed in shock and pain, staggering back as Storm’s blood-matted hair swiped the feet out from under the second bodyguard, and her sword cut deep into the goliath’s neck as he fell. He bounced, writhed, clawed the air feebly … and fell back into a bleeding heap.

As she turned to face the arcanist again, he stared at her in disbelief. “You-how did you-?”

“Old, gray experience and low cunning prevails over youthful overconfidence,” she replied crisply, bounding forward and swinging her sword. “Again.”

Her slash took out his throat.

As the arcanist toppled, she looked past his falling body at the rest of the mercenaries he’d been leading. They stared back at her uncertainly, not advancing, their swords and axes raised.

Storm Silverhand gave them a sweet smile.

“Run,” she suggested softly.

And obediently, they turned and fled back into the forest, every last warrior of them.

It had been some time since the young war wizard and a handful of Purple Dragons had bolted from this upper room off a back street in Suzail; Mirt’s flagon was almost empty now.

And that was bad, for his drinking companion was not in any mellow good humor.

“Fat man,” Manshoon said coldly across the table, “I have acquired a certain sneaking respect for you, truly I have. Yet know this: what is unfolding across Faerûn right now offers too many and too great opportunities to seize power for me to resist-even if I wasn’t as restless as I am. I enjoy drinking your wine, I have gone so far as to refrain from blasting you to ashes for foiling my plots, and I intend to depart this place leaving you alive and unharmed. Yet I will not tarry here longer, like an idle noble of Cormyr, too dunderheaded or too hampered by timidity or ignorance of how the fanged and clawed real world beyond these ornate walls works to stir from my chair and the endless parade of succulent feasting platters set before me. I go. Try to prevent me at your peril.”

Mirt looked across the table sadly, let out a great belch that rattled the door handle Manshoon was reaching for, and replied, “Worry not, Lord Manshoon; I intend to do nothing of the sort. I doubt I could hold my own against a vampire for half a breath, anyroad-to say nothing of an archmage of yer accomplishments.”

Manshoon sneered and wrenched open the door-to find the way blocked by two elderly but mighty-looking priests with glowing rods in their hands.

The other doors in the room opened then, and more high priests of various faiths, with quite an arsenal of enchanted items roused and aglow in their hands, came into the room. Followed by more than a dozen Wizards of War, holding all manner of dangerous-looking items of magic.

“That’s why,” Mirt added mildly, “I admitted my limitations for once, and called in the-er, cavalry.”

A cold-faced woman came up behind the fat man’s chair then, staring with flinty eyes at Manshoon. “Are you calling me a horse, Mirt?” she snapped.

Mirt chuckled. “No need, when I happen to know yer name. Thanks for coming, Glathra.”

Wizard of War Glathra Barcantle shrugged. “I did it for Cormyr, not for you.” There was an ugly, ungainly spiderlike creature on her shoulder with a human-seeming head that looked far too big for its splayed, segmented legs.

Manshoon peered at the spider-thing’s face, and frowned. “Vangerdahast?”

“The same,” the spider-thing rasped. “You haven’t been keeping up with events, Lord Manshoon. A serious failing in a vampire who desires continued existence, I’d say.”

“Is that a threat?” Manshoon asked silkily.

“I don’t make threats,” Vangerdahast replied. “These days, I deal in promises.”

Power was beginning to flow to the arcanists in Thultanthar, invisible energies dragged up from the besieged city below. Slowly, very slowly those energies came, the mythal seemingly reluctant to yield its shape and anything of its might.

The things the mythal of Myth Drannor could do, and the things it could thwart, were many, and most of them came with intricate commands and contingencies and attunements, a flood of half-seen memories and silent instructions and magical lore, the very things that fascinated most arcanists, that left them lusting for more. A hundred or more minds wavered, craving to know more, to study and see and master … and like a dark-eyed storm front rolling inexorably into their minds with cold patience but a grip like tightening iron, the High Prince of Thultanthar quelled their straying and dragged them back to the shared work of breaking down the resistance of the mythal and draining its energies.

Settling back into the shared concentration, they felt the power flowing, slow but vast, more and more on the move, coming to them, coming …

Stopping cold. There was a moment of chaos, of many minds separately plunging into shocked realization that their mighty shared ritual hadn’t ended, but rather had been abruptly halted by something more powerful.

Then the dark will of the Most High rose through them again, rallying them, turning them to collectively face and examine whatever it was that had stopped the draining-and walled away the energies they’d already sapped from the intricate and many-layered mythal.

The mysterious impediment loomed in their collective regard as a dark wall, but it was a dark wall that seemed to smile, and not nicely-in the brief instant before a barbed and many-clawed energy boiled out of the wall and lashed into their minds in a malicious slap, a bludgeoning blow of mental power that overwhelmed many of them.

All over the courtyard, arcanists toppled, bleeding from mouths and nostrils, unconsciousness as they fell. Others reeled, drooling or keening in dazed mental ruin. One fell to his knees and started trying to eat his own hands, biting and gnawing.

The great collective faltered.

Those who were still standing, mentally, recoiled in involuntary unison when the dark wall became a smiling, nigh skeletal face.

Fools and idiots, the undead being’s voice rolled mockingly into their heads, well met.

Half a hundred minds dared to ask, without any words at all, Who are you?

Some of the others knew, or guessed, and to them came the mental equivalent of a wink, dividing them from their fellows.

Shades of the City of Shadow, the voice echoed in their heads, far deeper and louder than the Most High’s had ever been, I am the Shadow King. I, alone, blocked all of your minds. A trifle, when one is Master of the Weave and Devourer of the Wards of Candlekeep. You prate of your power, and smugly hold yourselves to be mightier than the wizards of this world you have returned to. You preen, arcanists of Thultanthar, and exult in your power. And all the while, you know nothing of real power.

Another mental slap felled more arcanists, and left others clutching their heads and screaming, their minds collapsing into shattered darkness.

That is but a taste of what I can do casually, in an idle moment. As one would slap an irritating insect. As anyone responsible would slap down someone too ignorant and reckless to be trusted with the power you so arrogantly presume to seize. Shadovar, know this: if anyone in this world is going to be so arrogantly presumptuous, it will be me. Because I, Larloch, can-and can gainsay you and all other hollow pretenders.

And then that terrible mind turned from the cowering, gibbering, or droolingly ruined arcanists to bear down on just one mind. The sentience of Telamont Tanthul, High Prince of Thultanthar. What Larloch said to the Most High of the city, he let-nay, forced-every mind in the city to hear. It was a biting rebuke.

If you were a tenth the wielder of the Art you presume to be, you might have succeeded in this. If, that is, I decided not to prevent you.

Larloch ended his address with a contemptuous surge of power that shattered the draining spell and left Telamont Tanthul leaking mental pain into the heads of those arcanists still conscious and sane.

Then, the dark and awful mind was abruptly gone.

Leaving the Most High of Thultanthar aghast, standing in a courtyard littered with ruined arcanists.

Telamont Tanthul stared around wildly, hearing wild babblings, keening, and even doglike barking from some arcanists on their knees.

Then he turned and ran for the doors that would lead most directly to his throne, desperate to get to it and unleash all of the magics in that chamber, to try to destroy Larloch.

Before Larloch decided to destroy him.

Prince Aglarel lay sprawled and senseless in front of the doors.

Telamont kicked desperately at his son’s body, to try to shift it so he could get at least one door far enough open to slip through.

In the courtyard behind him, some of the arcanists started to howl and bay at the sun.