Farthest Reach (14 page)

But she doesn’t have the Nightstar. Where could she have learned the necessary spells? Is there another selukiira she might have access to? Or … did Sarya find a tutor? Araevin’s frown deepened, and he rubbed at the gemstone in his chest.

“This way,” Starbrow said. He turned from the path, striking off into the forests. He slid down a leaf-covered slope, muddy and wet with the spring, and splashed across a small stream at the bottom of the dell. But before they scrambled up the far side of the stream bank, Araevin sensed a terrible, icy cold in the air, and a crawling wrongness that turned his stomach.

He looked back up the short hillside they’d just descended. A pair of nightmarish monsters bounded down after them. They were a pale bluish-white in color, the hue of dead flesh, and they were big—each easily the size of an ogre, with insectile features, clacking mandibles, and long, lashing tails studded with terrible barbs. They carried great spears of black iron frosted with supernatural cold.

“Behind us!” he cried. “Ice devils!”

The devils hissed and clicked at each other, slowing and spreading apart as they realized their quarry had been brought to bay. Araevin and his companions turned to face them.

“We have to kill them,” Starbrow said. “Don’t let them teleport away, or they’ll be back with more of their kind in a matter of moments.”

“Right,” said Ilsevele.

Her hands blurred and her bow sang its deadly song, thrumming deeply. A silver arrow struck the first devil just above its cold, faceted eye, splintering against its chitinous hide, and a second arrow stuck in the tender joint between its armored torso and its bony arm.

The two fiends halted, gathering their infernal power. Araevin started to shout a warning, but even as he drew breath the monsters let loose with a terrible, scathing blast of unearthly cold. The stream iced over at once, and tree and fern alike turned white and died under the deadly frost.

Araevin ducked down under his cloak, hoping its enchantments would help protect him. Cold so fierce that it felt like a white-hot poker seared his hands, his feet, and soaked through his cloak, wrenching away his breath and burning in his nose and mouth. He heard Ilsevele cry out in pain. Then the cold eased, and he threw off his cloak, shaking off a mantle of deadly white hoarfrost as he stood again.

The whole hillside was white and frozen from the ice devils’ wintry blasts. The monsters stalked forward, iron spears smoking with cold. Before him, at the bottom of the dell, Filsaelene stood frozen. She had been in midstream when the devils attacked, and the ice on the creek held her immobilized at the knee.

“I’m stuck!” she cried.

Araevin leveled his disruption wand at the nearest of the two devils and barked out the command word. A bolt of azure energy, shimmering and crackling, lanced out from the wand to knock the devil off its feet. The second devil approached Filsaelene, who stooped down to smash the edge of her shield against the ice covering the creek, trying to free her feet from the ice. But then Maresa suddenly slipped out from behind a tree, leveled her crossbow, and shot the ice devil in the side of its thick neck. Blueblack gore spattered the frost-covered ground, and the monster whirled on her, moving with impossible speed for something so large and powerful. Maresa yelped and gave ground, ducking back into a young stand of alders and trying to keep as many of the slender white trees as possible between her and the devil.

“Is there a good way to kill these things?” Maresa called.

“Holy weapons!” Filsaelene replied. “You need a holy weapon to really hurt them!”

“Anything else?” the genasi demanded.

The ice devil stalked closer and rammed the point of its black spear through the trees, missing Maresa by a hand’s breadth.

Araevin blasted that devil with his wand, staggering it for a moment, then he risked a quick glance back at Ilsevele. He found her fumbling to pick up her bow again with frozen hands. Starbrow knelt by her, trying to help.

“I can’t shoot!” she said.

The first devil regained its feet and charged at Filsaelene, who finally managed to pull her feet free of the ice. She parried the first strike of its spear with her shield, twisted out of the way of the second, but then the monster’s barbed tail came sweeping in fast and low, lashing her across her knees. Her feet flew out from under her, and Filsaelene fell on her back in the icy stream, her sword clattering out of her grasp. The monster straddled her, one clawed foot on either side of her torso, and raised its great black spear in both hands.

Then Starbrow came dashing down the slope, Keryvian alight in his hands. The sword gleamed in one perfect arc that took off the ice devil’s leg at the knee. The creature let out a high-pitched, whistling shriek, and toppled into the creek, even as it slashed and gouged at Starbrow. The big moon elf followed the monster to the ground, blocking its claws and mandibles with lightning-swift parries. Then he set one foot on its chest and rammed Keryvian’s point through the monster’s mandibles, pinning its head to the streambed Keryvian’s pure white fire flashed from the ice devil’s eyes. The thing shuddered once and lay still.

The second ice devil whirled at the cry of the first, and abandoned Maresa to rush toward the others. But when Starbrow killed its companion, the ice devil halted, its eyes glittering with cold malice. It abruptly vanished, teleporting away.

“Damn,” Starbrow said. “It’s gone for help!”

“Quickly, then. We must be away from here before it returns!” Araevin replied. He turned and helped Ilsevele to her feet, shivering at the icy touch of her flesh. “Can you walk?” he asked her.

She winced with pain, but nodded. “Yes. Let’s go.”

They scrambled up the other side of the dell, and ran at their best speed through the woods beyond, following Starbrow as he dashed ahead. He led them for several hundred yards, through tall groves of magnificent trees that resembled nothing so much as the pillars of a great cathedral above a floor of green ferns, into tangled thickets and past old ruined walls and roads, before they reached a small shrine or chapel half-hidden by the hillside it was built against.

“In here,” Starbrow said. “I think we’ll be safe.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Ilsevele asked. “Wouldn’t it be better to stay out in the woods, where we can try to keep ahead of the pursuit? If they track us to this place, we’ll be cornered.”

“The fey’ri have wings,” Starbrow answered. “If they find us in the open, we won’t be able to outrun them. Hiding is probably our best option. And if I remember right … ” The moon elf warrior moved into the ruined shrine, and studied the floor carefully.

“Whatever you’re doing, do it quickly! The fey’ri are coming,” Maresa hissed. She flattened herself beside the door, watching the path along which they’d just come.

“There are at least a dozen of them back there.”

Starbrow swept aside a small bare patch, then knelt to flip up a flagstone and open a hidden catch. Behind the altar, a hidden door slid open.

“Into the passage,” he said, and stood aside to motion Araevin, Ilsevele, and Filsaelene through. Maresa followed, hurrying across the chapel, and Starbrow stepped in and slid the door closed.

The chamber beyond was absolutely lightless, but then Filsaelene spoke the words of a minor prayer and summoned up a magical light. Araevin looked around and saw that they were in a natural cave hidden within the hillside. A small pool of clear, still water lay in the center of the cave, and soft moss that glowed faintly blue-green covered the floor. “What is this place?” he asked.

“A secret refuge, hidden beneath the shrine of Sehanine Moonbow. There are a few such places scattered around Myth Drannor and its outskirts,” Starbrow said. “Once they were also guarded by spells designed to keep them concealed, even against magic, but I don’t know if those work any longer. The moss has healing properties, if you are hurt.”

He set Keryvian down on the ground, and lowered himself to the moss, stretching out as if on a bed.

“How did you ever find this place?” Ilsevele asked. She sank down onto the mossy floor nearby.

Starbrow shrugged and looked over to Araevin. “How long before we can use that portal to return to Myth Glaurach?”

“Several hours, I think,” Araevin replied. “Of course, Sarya may be guarding it now. For that matter, we’ll have to figure out a way to reach it without fighting our way through her entire legion.”

“Can you prepare any spells that would help us reach the portal unseen?” Filsaelene asked.

“Not until I rest. Then, I could ready the invisibility spell again,” Araevin said. He frowned, and added, “That is, assuming that I can commit spells to my mind at all. I think that Sarya’s trap only depleted my mind of the spells I knew at the moment, but if she somehow drew out my ability to cast spells at all… .”

“Aillesel Seldarie,” Ilsevele breathed. “Araevin, I didn’t realize how the mythal had affected you.”

“Well, we will cross that bridge when we come to it, as my human friends say.” Araevin looked over to Starbrow. “If we were thinking of hiding here for several hours to allow the portal to recharge, we might as well remain here long enough for me to prepare spells, if I can. It will make things much easier if we have trouble getting back to the portal glade.”

They settled down to rest from their exertions, lying quietly in the moss-filled cave. Filsaelene used her spells to heal the worst of their injuries, though her healing spells could do nothing for Araevin’s magic. Stilling his thoughts to silence, Araevin stretched out and let himself drift into Reverie, trying very hard not to dwell on what would happen if he found he could not wield magic. While he composed himself to rest, he listened to his companions conversing in low voices.

“When did you explore this place, Starbrow?” Ilsevele asked the moon elf.

“A long time ago.”

“It can’t be that long ago. You’re not more than a hundred and fifty or so, are you?”

“That’s about right,” Starbrow said.

“That is certainly long by my standards,” Maresa observed. “Because you elves live so damned long, you have no idea of the value of time.”

Ilsevele smiled in the dim light. “That might be true, but I note that Starbrow here hasn’t answered my question. You’ve said before that you were from Cormanthor, but where exactly?”

“I thought the elves abandoned this place,” Maresa said, surprised.

“For the most part, we did,” Filsaelene told her. “Certainly no elves live near Myth Drannor any longer. But there are still a few small elven settlements in different places in this forest. Cormanthor stretches from the Thunder Peaks to the Dragon Reach, and from Cormyr to the Moonsea. It’s a big forest.”

“How did you come to meet my father?” Ilsevele asked. “Until he embarked on this crusade against the daemonfey, I never knew him to have visited Cormanthor.”

Starbrow remained silent for a long time. “You will have to ask your father about that,” he finally said. “It’s not a question for me to answer.”

“Now what does that mean?” Ilsevele asked, rather sharply.

“Ask your father,” Starbrow said again. Then he fell silent, and said no more.

Araevin finally stirred fully from his Reverie some hours later, and felt surprisingly refreshed. He ran his fingers over the blue moss of the cavern floor, and wondered what kind of healing magic the folk of Myth Drannor had imbued in it long ago. He found Starbrow sitting with his back to the wall, watching the secret door that led back out to the chapel. Ilsevele and Filsaelene were deep in their own Reveries, and Maresa was simply asleep, snoring softly.

Lying still, he closed his eyes and touched the Nightstar embedded in his chest, seeking the spells the selukiira stored as ably as his own spellbooks. He chose a simple spell of minor telekinesis first, the sort of thing that almost any apprentice could master, and concentrated on it until its mystic symbology and invocations were pressed into his mind, like a melody he could not get out of his head.

Then he sat up, moved his hands in the appropriate gestures, and muttered the words of the simple spell. To his great relief, he felt the magic, soft and familiar, streaming through his mind and his fingertips, as he picked up a small stone and carefully moved it over to drop into Starbrow’s lap.

The moon elf looked up. “You did that?”

Araevin nodded. “Yes. Sarya’s defenses simply emptied my mind of readied spells. They didn’t damage my ability to study and memorize more.”

“That’s a relief, then,” the moon elf said.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Araevin replied. He focused his attention on the selukiira again, and began furiously memorizing spell after spell, rebuilding his repertoire from nothing. He felt as if his mind were humming with arcane energy, a sensation that he had become so accustomed to in centuries of practicing magecraft that he could not begin to guess when he might have stopped noticing it.

“How long will you need to ready your spells?”

“An hour, perhaps two,” said Araevin. “Then we will see about getting out of here.”

*****

Sarya Dlardrageth stood by a ruined wall near the city’s old Burial Glen, and studied her handiwork with the mythal-weave. The dark bronze strands of her crafting drifted past her outstretched fingers, winding in and among the invisible golden net that comprised the city’s ancient magic field.

“Here,” she said. “He was here when the mythal’s defenses struck him.”

Xhalph waited nearby, towering over her. The daemonfey prince stood well over eight feet tall, with four powerfully muscled arms and just the slightest canine cast to his features—both inherited from his demonic father.

“The sun elf mage?” he asked. “The one who marred your weaving at Myth Glaurach?”

“Yes,” Sarya hissed.

In her long life she had learned to hate many adversaries, to nurse smoldering anger and cold fury for years upon years, but rarely had she been dealt such a reverse as Araevin Teshurr had dealt her in the heart of her own citadel. The very notion that he had somehow followed her to her new lair and had attempted to evict her from yet another mythal was enough to fill her with a wrath so hot and bitter than even Xhalph shied from meeting her eyes.