Final Gate (8 page)

Maresa did not delay an instant. She dashed at once back toward the steps, dodging between writhing coils and leaping over those that lay on the ground. The ophidians still could not see her, but they sensed something brushing past, and the genasi left a wake of rearing torsos and snapping fangs in her wake.

From the pool in the center of the room, a powerful hooded serpent slowly rose up, its back gleaming with a brilliant black-and-red pattern of diamond scales. It glanced around at Maresa, and Araevin saw that its face was almost human, with cold yellow eyes and deadly fangs. A naga! he realized. It spotted the fleeing genasi at once and said something to its followers in a harsh, hissing speech. Ophidians threw themselves forward, trying to cut off her escape.

“Araevin!” Maresa cried. “Do something”

Bowstrings sang as Jorin, Nesterin, and Gaerradh loosed their arrows at the ophidians below. The naga started to spit out the words of a spell, but at that moment Maresa leaped up the first few steps of the staircase. Araevin saw the chance he had been waiting for. Quickly intoning his own spell, he raised a great barrier of glittering white ice across the steps and the great hall, walling off the naga and its ophidian minions White frost motes sparkled in the gloom as his companions’ arrows rebounded from the icy wall.

Maresa reached the balcony and risked a quick glance behind her. “That should keep them. Nicely done,” she said to Araevin.

“And you as well,” he told the genasi.

“Hardly. If I’d done it right, they never would have known I was there.”

“It was good enough,” he reassured her. Then he looked to his companions. “Come on, my friends. We should make sure that we are well away from here by the time the ophidians find another way up to this balcony.”

27 Flamerule, the Year of Lightning Storms

To make sure that they outdistanced any pursuit from the ophidians or their masters, Araevin and his companions marched hard for a long time after climbing back up from the from the depths of the Nameless Dungeon. Only when the for of Nar Kerymhoarth was lost to sight in the green sea behind them did Araevin signal for a halt.

“This should be safe enough,” he said to his friends. “I don’t think the serpent folk will follow us so far from their lair, but I’ll weave some spells to hide us from them just in case.”

“Good,” Donnor said wearily. The human knight was soaked with sweat. He’d kept up with the long-striding elves despite the fifty pounds of steel he wore, but he heaved a deep sigh of relief as he began to unbuckle the straps and fastenings of his heavy armor. “Once I sit down, I won’t be getting up for a long time, not even if the king of all serpent men himself comes to murder me in my sleep.”

Maresa sat down nearby, loosed the collar of her scarletdyed leather coat, and shrugged her satchel off her shoulder. “Before we get too comfortable, maybe Araevin had better make sure that we got the right crystal. If we have to go back and try it again, I’d rather know right now.”

She handed the satchel to Araevin, who drew out the shard and unwrapped it from the dark cloth Maresa had used to hide it. The piece was smooth and cool to the touch, roughly daggerlike in shape, and a little more than half a foot from tip to tip. In his hands it seemed to stir, as if it recognized the magic in his touch, and a bright violet-white gleam appeared in its depths. He turned it slowly in his hand, studying it closely.

“Well?” the genasi demanded.

“It’s a piece of the Gatekeeper’s Crystal. I saw the shard we kept in the vaults of Tower Reilloch years ago. I don’t know for certain if this is the same one, but if it isn’t, it’s an exact copy.”

“Can you sense the presence of the second or third shards, Araevin?” Nesterin asked.

Araevin allowed his perception to sink into the shard, absorbing the faint pearlescent glimmers that danced in its depths, groping for a spark of recognition or acknowledgment. Unlike the seluhiira of Saelethil Dlardrageth, there was no guiding consciousness preserved in the Gatekeeper’s Crystal. He could feel the power of the thing, a hidden wellspring of living magic waiting to be tapped, but the shard was not aware of itself or its surroundings.

While his companions watched, Araevin whispered the words of a finding spell and fixed his attention on the gleaming white crystal in his hand. At once he felt a sharp jolt of connection, as if the shard had sent some intangible call echoing out from the small clearing in the great forest, a call that swept swiftly and silently across the miles. And he felt an answer, a keen ringing tone somewhere far to the east and north. It was the sort of shrill, high tone he might have expected if he’d struck the shard in his hand with a small hammer. He scrambled to his feet without even noticing, and looked in the direction of the sound.

“There,” he breathed. “Did you feel that?”

Maresa and Donnor simply shrugged, but Nesterin frowned. “I thought I sensed something, but I could not tell you what it was I felt,” the star elf said.

“That direction,” Araevin said, pointing. “Very far, I think. Possibly hundreds of miles.”

“Hundreds?” Maresa picked up a handful of pine needles from the forest floor and threw them down again with a snort of disgust. “I’m getting tired of crisscrossing Faerun chasing after your intuition, Araevin. Could you just for once go looking for an ancient elven gemstone that’s been left out in some close-by, cheerful spot? For that matter, I’m tired of chasing after gems. Why is everything a damned gem or crystal?”

“Durability,” Araevin answered. “The sun elves of old knew ways to fashion crystal that remains almost indestructible today, thousands of years after it was cast. We’ve been chasing after crystals because that’s the form in which magical power and knowledge from elder days was preserved.”

“It was a rhetorical question,” Maresa grumbled. “So how far east do we have to go? Back to Cormanthor? Thay? Kara-Tur?”

“I am not certain,” Araevin admitted. He could clearly sense the direction, but the distant ringing of the crystal had held an odd note, something he could not easily put into words. Somehow he doubted that it would be as simple as riding toward the dawn until they found the second shard. “We’ll make for Myth Glaurach before we do anything else. We need to collect our mounts and provision ourselves for a long journey.”

The short summer night passed quietly, and in the morning they retraced their steps back toward the conquered fey’ri stronghold. They reached the ruined city in the hills late in the day, and passed the night among the wood elves who guarded the place. Beneath the lanterns and starlight, Myth Glaurach’s overgrown ruins did not seem as sad as they once did—but then again, the songs of the wood elves had a way of dispelling the gloom. They rested for the night in the small chapel where they had stayed a few tendays before, when the whole of Seiveril’s Crusade was encamped in the ruins.

Early the following day, Gaerradh took her leave of the small company. “I must go visit Lady Morgwais in the High Forest and tell her what happened in Nar Kerymhoarth,” she said. “And after that, I should go see Alustriel and Methrammar in Silverymoon. But I wish you luck in your search for the remaining shards.”

“Thank you for your help, Gaerradh,” Araevin said. “Sweet water and light laughter until we meet again.”

He bowed to the wood elf, but she shook her head and caught him in a rib-cracking embrace. “Sun elves,” she laughed. “Would it hurt you to smile?” Then she treated Jorin, Nesterin, and Maresa the same way, and even Donnor Kerth too, which left the fierce Tethyrian blushing—he was chivalrous to a fault and had firmly fixed ideas about how a devout man should act in the presence of the fairer sex. But he rallied enough to timidly pat her back before letting her go.

They spent the rest of the morning gathering provisions and seeing to their mounts, and rode out of Myth Glaurach in the afternoon. This time Araevin determined to head north into the wilds of Turnstone Pass. The day was warm and mild, and they were high enough in the hills that even in midsummer it would not grow uncomfortably hot, certainly not compared to the depths of the Yuirwood or Cormanthor.

The road climbed into the foothills north of the old city, winding between steep hills covered in thick pine forest. Sometimes the white ribbon of a waterfall slicing from the rocky heights above appeared through the trees. After a few miles, the road rose steadily higher along the shoulders of the hills, and the trees thinned out, offering broad views of the country to the east and south. Nesterin, riding beside Araevin, spent much of his time admiring the view.

“This is striking country,” the star elf observed. “Those are the Nether Mountains?”

“Yes, on both sides of the pass.” Araevin pointed toward the northeast, where the peaks rose bare and brown above the green mantle of forest covering their shoulders. “Netheril once stood on the far side of the mountains. The desert Anauroch lies there now.”

Nesterin glanced at Araevin. “Our path leads us into the desert?”

“Not if I can help it,” Araevin said. “I think our journey should begin at the House of Long Silences. There is a portal only a few miles farther up this road that will take us there.”

“The House of Long Silences?”

“It’s a meeting place of portals in the Ardeep Forest, near Waterdeep. I believe that some of the doors there lead into the Waymeet itself, and that in turn is a place where thousands of portals come together. I think that if we look there, we may find a gate that will take us much closer to the place where the second shard awaits.”

After a while, they reached a place where a small side trail zigzagged up toward a lonely watchtower overlooking the pass. Little remained of the old tower, only a hollow ring of stone standing less than twenty feet tall. Mounds of stone blocks gathered around the stump, hinting at the height the tower had once possessed.

“A guard post for the pass raised by the humans of Ascalhorn,” Araevin explained to the others. “I think it was razed by the fiends of Hellgate Keep soon after they overran the city.”

He dismounted, and took his horse’s reins in hand, leading his friends past the stump of the tower to the broken remains of a small shrine. Here, a doorway of stone with a lintel carved in the shape of a flowering vine stood incongruously in the steep hillside.

“That looks like portals we saw beneath Myth Glaurach,” Donnor said.

“Yes, it’s the work of elves. I never determined whether the portal was placed here after Ascalhorn raised the watchtower, or if Ascalhorn raised the tower at this spot because the portal was here.” Araevin studied the old portal, seeking out the old activating words the builders had hidden in the decorative carvings around its edges. “Remember, once I activate the door, it will not stay open long. Lead your horses through on foot. All you need to do is keep the reins in hand while you touch the stone within the archway. You will appear in the Ardeep Forest.”

After one quick look to make sure his companions were ready, Araevin woke the portal with his spells. The blank stone in the center of the archway did not vanish, but it took on a shimmering, liquid appearance. He paused for a moment, admiring the artistry of the long-dead mage who had fashioned its skein of enchantments and abjurations. Then he set his hand on the cool stone, murmured the ancient passwords, and was gone.

*****

The smoke of forges and foundries always hung thickly over the lower quarters of Zhentil Keep, filling the city with an acrid reek. Scyllua Darkhope, castellan and captain of the city’s armies, clattered through the streets astride her fearsome white nightmare, with six of her elite Castellan’s Guard riding after her. She hardly even noticed as common tradesmen and guttersnipes scattered from her path. Her eyes remained fixed on great and distant things.

The riders came to the new bridge spanning the Tesh, and turned north toward the black battlements of the keep from which her city took its name. By some lucky accident, the great castle was rarely troubled by the fuming stink of the city’s industries. The westerly winds usually carried the smoke out over the dark waters of the Moonsea, away from the low hill where the castle stood guard above the cheerless streets.

“Make way for the castellan!” called one of the guards who followed her.

As Scyllua rode beneath the iron portcullis of the river gate, soldiers in black and yellow sprang to attention, striking the butts of their halberds on the flagstones. Somewhere far overhead, the long yellow whiptail of the castellan’s pennant broke from a flagpole atop the keep, signaling the arrival of the castle’s commander. Cries of “The castellan returns!” echoed from watchpost to watchpost along the walls.

Scyllua swung herself down from her pale steed, giving it a single pat of her gauntleted hand before the hell-horse vanished back into the infernal realms with a single shriek. It would come again at her call, to serve when she needed it. Then she finally acknowledged the sergeant-at-arms who stood with his arm across his chest in salute.

“Lord Fzoul summoned me?”

“Yes, High Captain. He awaits you in his chambers.”

Scyllua nodded absently and strode into the keep’s lower hall. She took the steps quickly despite her armor of black plate, and her Castellan’s Guards labored to keep up with her. Five flights of stairs later, she came to a great double door of black adamantine, emblazoned with the symbol of a mighty gauntleted fist. Ten warriors stood guard before the door, as well as a fearsome beholder.

She did not look at the creature as she said, “Announce me, Tharxul.”

The many-eyed monster drifted idly in the air, regarding Scyllua with several of its writhing eyes. “Of course, Lady Scyllua,” the creature gurgled in a deep, wet voice. “We have been expecting you. You may enter.”

The castellan took three strides past the floating monster before she paused, her fist on the door. She frowned and looked back at the beholder. Her eyes lost their distant distraction as she fixed them on the monster. Bright and cold as steel they shone.

“What did you say, Tharxul?” she asked softly.

The endless weaving of the creature’s eyestalks slowed. “You are expected,” it wheezed. “You may enter.”