The Siege (12 page)

An orb of darkness streaked up out of the basin and drilled a fist-sized hole through a creature close over their heads. It dropped onto the slope above and started to slide down toward them, roaring its pain in a swirling tempest of winds and lashing out with a wild flurry of lightning and burning light. Galaeron took a white fork of energy in the shoulder and went rigid, biting down on his tongue so hard that his teeth met through the flesh.

Vala hurled her sword, slicing off one of the phaerimm’s arms and a good portion of its sinewy shoulder. The creature rolled away, then whistled something in the phaerimm wind language and vanished.

Galaeron felt Vala catch him by the collar, then their descent began to slow as they reached the bottom of the basin and the slope lost its steepness. She called her darksword back to her hand, and only after it had

returned did she turn her attention to the smoking hole in his shoulder.

“How bad?”

Galaeron managed to unclench his jaw and, with a mouthful of blood, said, “Stiff, but all right.”

He tried to rise, making it as far as his knees before discovering his muscles would not obey. Vala moved his leg into a stable kneeling position, then they both scanned the area. The battle appeared to have ended as quickly as it had started. Shadovar warriors and pieces of Shadovar warriors were sliding down the slope toward them, accumulating in groaning, knee-deep piles. Half a dozen phaerimm—or rather sections of half a dozen phaerimm—lay interspersed among the smoking bodies.

Telamont Tanthul stood a quarter of the way around the basin, Hadrhune at his side as always, calling for his princes and ordering the survivors to arrange search parties. There were no thornbacks in sight; once a battle started to turn against them, it was phaerimm instinct to teleport away. Galaeron knew the enclave defenses would prevent them from leaving the city via translocational magic—but he also knew the phaerimm would have anticipated that and picked a safe rallying point.

Galaeron grabbed Vala’s arm and pulled himself up.

“Take it easy,” she said. “You’re not looking so good.”

Though he was still angry with Telamont for drawing out his shadow and at that moment truly wanted to see the Shadovar mythallar destroyed—considering the number of deaths that would mean, he hoped that particular desire was his shadow’s instead of his own— Galaeron also knew that Evereska’s fate depended on Shade Enclave’s continued survival.

“It’s not done,” Galaeron said. “They’re still in the city.”

Vala wrapped him in a supporting arm and started toward the Most High. “Telamont isn’t going to like this. Didn’t he order you to stay out of fights until you’re able to pass on Melegaunt’s knowledge?”

Galaeron nodded at the huge sphere of obsidian they were circling past. “He seems to have made an exception for the mythallar.”

Vala glanced at the orb and raised her brow. “That’s the mythallar? I was sort of expecting it to be the Karsestone.”

“Me, too,” Galaeron said.

After unleashing the phaerimm, they had journeyed into the Dire Wood, fighting liches and other undead guardians in order to help Melegaunt recover the famed Karsestone and use its “heavy” magic—from a time before the Weave and Shadow Weave split—to return Shade Enclave to Faerűn.

“I guess they only needed the stone to open a large enough gate between the dimensions,” he said. “Apparently, the Shadow Weave can still support spells powerful enough to levitate a city.”

“The Weave can’t?” Vala asked.

“It hasn’t,” Galaeron answered, shrugging. “Not since the fall of Netheril.”

If Vala saw the danger in that, her expression didn’t show it. “That is good news for Evereska, if it means the Shadovar are more powerful than the phaerimm.”

Galaeron nodded, but didn’t say what it might also mean. If the Shadovar were more powerful than the phaerimm, then they were also more powerful than most of the great wizards of the realms. Only the Chosen themselves, or perhaps an entire circle of high mages, could rival their power.

They were almost to Telamont and Hadrhune when the first of the princes, with half a dozen Shadovar lords

at his back, stepped out of the murk at the rim of the basin and began to descend the slick wall. Galaeron recognized Brennus by his large, crescent-shaped mouth and the orange tinge of his iron-colored eyes. Not slipping on the steep obsidian slope, he and the others began to angle more or less in Telamont’s direction, their faces showing no reaction at all to the carnage around them. When they reached the body piles at the bottom they began to clamber across without drawing so much as a moan or disturbing even one arm.

“Vala, do you see that?” Galaeron asked.

“What?” she asked.

Like almost everyone else in the basin, Vala was focusing her attention on the murk near the rim, blithely awaiting the arrival of the rest of the princes.

“Lower. Look at Brennus’s feet.”

Vala looked, then frowned at the way no one seemed bothered that Brennus was stepping on them. “That’s just wrong.”

“So I thought,” Galaeron said.

They were still thirty paces from Telamont, perhaps half that from Brennus and his companions. He stopped and pulled a small flake of obsidian from his robe pocket.

“Galaeron, no.” Vala grabbed his arm. “You’re—”

“Let go!” Galaeron ripped his arm free, then began to scrape the flake over his palm. “If that’s really Brennus, he’ll never know.”

Galaeron began the incantation of a shadow divination—a more powerful one than he should have been using but necessary if he was to dispel a phaerimm’s disguise magic. A surge of cold shadow magic rushed into his body, chilling him down to the marrow in his bones and filling him with a cold, bitter resentment at… well, everyone: Melegaunt and the other princes, Telamont, Hadrhune—even Vala.

The spell ended as the “prince” and his escorts were stepping over the last of the casualties onto the basin floor. The shadow drained from their bodies like water, revealing six phaerimm and a strange, three-eyed, three-tentacled orb with a huge, finch like beak.

“Impos—

That was as far as Vala’s warning got before the basin erupted into flying shadow balls and sizzling fans of light. Two of the phaerimm and fifty Shadovar fell in the battle’s first breath, and the three-eyed creature spun toward Galaeron, its tentacles whirling like the scimitars of a drow blademaster. Vala intercepted it, her darksword rising to meet the spinning tentacles—and fell back as the thing beat down her guard, slashing her up the cheek, above the eye, and then across the neck.

Galaeron pulled her back and drew his own sword, his elven steel severing one hooked tentacle as it struck at the hollow of her throat, then falling to his back as the thing’s wicked beak clacked at his head. Another hook came whipping down toward Galaeron’s unarmored heart—and was intercepted by Vala’s darksword. She twined her black blade into the tentacle and pulled the creature toward her, bringing her iron dagger up to meet it The blade sank a finger’s depth, and the third tentacle came around, burying its hook in the back of her knee and trying to jerk her off her feet Vala was too nimble. She gave it a dead leg, letting her foot rise while she pushed and twisted the dagger. The blade sank perhaps another knuckle.

Galaeron pulled a strand of shadowsilk from his pocket and wadded it into a ball, beginning the incantation for a shadow ball.

“Galaeron!” Vala yelled, hopping on one foot as the thing whipped her impaled leg to and fro. Somehow, during all this, she still managed to knock the shadowsilk from his hand. “No more—”

“Shut the hell up and fight!”

Galaeron kicked the thing’s beak off of him and rammed his sword up through its body. Leaving it buried there, he pulled a small cylinder of glass from his pocket and rolled through the incantation for a normal lightning bolt and felt nothing.

Well, not nothing, exactly. There was a cold prickling as the shadow magic tried to rise into him where his body was touching the ground, but he pushed this down and opened himself to the Weave so he could cast a normal, bright, searing lightning bolt—and there was nothing. He had lost the Weave.

Vala exchanged her dagger for his sword’s hilt, pushed, twisted, slashed, then cried out in alarm as the thing wrapped its dehooked tentacle around her ankle. Instead of allowing it to pull her foot out from under her, Vala dropped to her back, pulling Galaeron’s sword from the creature’s body and bringing a cascade of entrails with it.

The thing screeched in anguish and exploded into a bloody cloud as a huge shadow ball burst through its center. What remained plopped down between Galaeron and Vala, its slimy tentacles still twined around Vala and her darksword. She quickly used Galaeron’s sword to cut herself free, then flipped it around and shoved the hilt at him.

“Don’t ever—I don’t care how darkly shadowed you are—don’t ever tell me to shut up.”

“And don’t you ever—ever—interrupt a spellcasting,” Galaeron snapped back. “Or the next time, I’ll let it snap your head off.”

“Better a …” She looked at the three-eyed thing and curled her lip in disgust, then continued, “… a monster I don’t know than one I do.”

She dropped his sword in the mess, then rolled to her feet and limped off through the carnage, leaving Galaeron to face Telamont and Hadrhune as the pair came up

behind the monster’s disemboweled body. The Most High nudged it with a dark boot.

“Our enemies from the shadow plane attack us even here,” he said. “The ‘monster’ is called a malaugrym. You did well to unmask it. One might even say that we all owe you our lives.”

“One might,” Galaeron said, struggling to his feet, “but it seems a simple ‘thank you’ is too much to ask.”

Telamont’s eyes sparkled. “If that is what your shadow needs to hear.”

“My shadow?” Galaeron growled. “It’s just common courtesy.”

Then, remembering how Vala had saved his life when his lightning bolt failed, he realized Telamont was right. Vala had been, too. His shadow had been completely in control—perhaps it still was.

Telamont motioned to Hadrhune, and both kneeled before Galaeron—causing every shadow lord who happened to be looking in the direction to do likewise.

“Galaeron Nihmedu, on behalf of Shade Enclave,” Telamont began, just a hint of mockery in his voice, “please accept our most sincere—”

“Not necessary,” Galaeron said, realizing how ignoble he was to be demanding thanks when so many had died. “Forgive me for asking.”

Telamont did not rise. “You see, you can live with your shadow.”

“Sure I can,” Galaeron scoffed, looking past the Most High’s shoulder. He owed someone an apology. “Where’d Vala go?”

Telamont rose and turned, then said, “There are some things even I do not know.”

“Have no fear for her comfort,” Hadrhune said, looking in the same direction as Galaeron. “Vala saved Prince Escanor’s life. She will always be welcome in his villa.”

15 Mirtul, the Year of Wild Magic

With Boareskyr Bridge hidden somewhere beneath the brown lake that had once been the plains north of the Trollclaws, Laeral’s relief army was crossing the Winding Water on a fleet of rain-soaked log rafts. Laeral herself had flown three magic guidelines across two miles of muddy water, and along with her hippogriff-mounted scouts and several dozen of her best battle mages she was standing guard on the western shore, expecting a phaerimm attack at any moment.

This was the last river they would cross before reaching Evereska, and if the enemy meant to stop them, it would be there, and Laeral knew there was a good chance that they would.

In addition to slowing the progress of the relief army to a crawl, the horrid weather was taking a terrible toll on the health and spirit of the army. There was not a fighter among them who doubted that they owed their lives to the forces of Shade. Had the Shadovar not appeared when they did at the High Moor, the enemy horde would have beaten them to the high ground and obliterated the army to a warrior.

Many officers were beginning to question the wisdom of continuing the march at all. While the priests and healers were keeping deaths from illness to a bare minimum, most soldiers were feverish and—with the constant rainfall spoiling rations—weak from hunger. Even if they reached Evereska in time, it seemed likely that their poor condition would only be a burden on those already in place.

Laeral refused to hear these arguments. Sooner or later, the weather would break—it had to—and a few days of sunshine would do wonders to rejuvenate the army. More importantly, she felt certain the phaerimm would eventually find a way to defeat the shadowshell. When that happened, the thornbacks would learn from their mistake and scatter across Faerűn, and the only thing capable of stopping them would be the sheer numbers of Laeral’s relief army.

Most of all, there was her beloved Khelben to think about. He had vanished at the Battle of Rocnest, defending a trio of Evermeet’s high mages as they attempted to open a translocational gate that would have allowed Waterdeep to send relief forces in a matter of moments instead of months, and Laeral was determined to find out what had become of him. She would have known if he had died—as a Chosen herself, she would have felt his loss in the Weave—so he had either been sucked into another plane when the phaerimm captured the gate, or

trapped inside Evereska with the elves. She was gambling on Evereska, if for no other reason than she had already done what little was possible to contact him in the planes beyond.

The first rafts appeared out of the rain, the deep voices of two hundred Uthgardt barbarians chanting a somber hauling song as they pulled themselves along the guide rope. Laeral began to think her army would actually make the crossing successfully. The rafts were spaced about thirty paces apart, just far enough to avoid being caught if a magic fireball, meteor storm, or some other area attack struck the raft in front, yet close enough that the warriors on any one raft could help the others if they did come under attack.