Farthest Reach (37 page)

“Corellon’s sword,” Araevin whispered.

“Well, what do you see?” Maresa asked.

“You did well to turn away from the mist,” Araevin answered. “It’s a portal to another dimension, and if I am any judge of such things, not a dimension you would want to visit. We will have to avoid any such rivers we come across.”

“That will become more and more difficult the farther we venture from Sildeyuir’s heart,” Nesterin warned. “In the farthest reaches of the realm, there is nothing but this cursed mist.”

They turned their horses from the road and climbed up the side of the dell, simply circumventing the silvergray pool roiling across the road. But as they continued on their way, they began to meet with more and more of the glimmering streams. Sometimes long tongues or arms of the mist seemed to shadow their path, twisting through the trees and glades of the forest beside the road. Other times pools or streams blocked their path, forcing them to detour away from the road and feel their way forward through the forest. The woodland fell ominously silent, with not a hint of bird song or animal movement. Araevin realized that most of the forest creatures had long since abandoned the mist-haunted districts of the forest, seeking more wholesome environs.

At the end of Sildeyuir’s dim day, they made their camp atop a small knoll in the forest. Araevin had observed that the silver mist tended to cling to lowlying areas, and it seemed prudent to seek a camp in some high place so that they would not be overcome while they rested. When they rose in the morning and studied their surroundings, they found that the knoll afforded a good view of the country around them.

A great gulf of silvergray mist lay only a few miles away, carving its way through the forested hillsides like a fog-shrouded arm of the sea. Other inlets and channels glinted in the bright distance ahead and on all sides, as if they were approaching a sea coast of sorts.

“It’s closing in behind us,” Jorin murmured, looking back the way they had come. “I don’t know if we could retrace our steps.”

Araevin followed the Yuir ranger’s gaze, and saw that large parts of the road they had passed along in their travel of the day before seemed to have been swallowed by the pearly streaks. He steeled himself and turned back toward the land ahead.

“We will find a way through,” he told Jorin. “I know some spells that may help.”

They broke camp quickly, unwilling to risk being stranded on the hilltop, and continued toward the edge of the realm. During the last hour of their ride great arms of silvergray nothingness came to surround them on either side, so that it seemed that they were riding along a low, treacherous peninsula jutting out into a misty sea. Small patches and pools of mist began to appear in the road and in the woods to either side, slowly growing larger and more frequent as they pressed on, until they met and merged together. Finally they came to a place where they simply could go no farther. Ahead of them lay nothing but endless silvergray mist, cold and perfect.

They halted and stood still for a time, looking out over nothingness. Finally, Araevin shook himself and looked over to Nesterin.

“How much farther to Mooncrescent?” he asked.

The star elf looked around, studying those landmarks that hadn’t been swallowed yet. “Five miles, I think. But there’s no other way through. It’s gone.”

Araevin stared at the mist, and remembered the pure shining fountain he had seen in his vision many days and long miles before. The Nightstar was cold and hard in his chest, a dull aching weight that seemed to transfix his heart. He could almost hear Saelethil’s mocking laughter, as this strangest of all obstacles checked his path toward high magic and the knowledge he needed to contest Sarya Dlardrageth’s power in Myth Drannor.

I am not about to let Saelethil Dlardrageth laugh at me, he told himself.

Without glancing at his companions, he dismounted from his horse and began to undo the animal’s saddle belt.

“Araevin? What are you doing?” Ilsevele asked.

“The horses are terrified of the mist,” he said. “We can’t take them in there.”

“To the Nine Hells with the horses!” Maresa snapped. “We can’t take us in there!”

“Nevertheless,” Araevin said, “I am going forward. I ask no one else to come with me.”

The rest of the company stared at him for a long moment, and Ilsevele slid wordlessly from her saddle and began to remove the harness from her own horse. A moment later Donnor Kerth and Jorin followed suit, and Nesterin as well. Finally Maresa swore and swung herself down from the horse.

“You’re all mad,” she snapped. “This is the worst idea I’ve heard in a long time!”

“I know,” Araevin said. He tossed the saddle into the grass at the side of the road, and patted his horse’s neck. “But it’s the only one I have right now.”

*****

The First Lord’s Tower gleamed above the thin blanket of mist, smoke, and lanternlight that pooled in Hillsfar’s streets. Despite the late hour, the city was not entirely asleep. The distant sounds of raucous shouts and bawdy singing drifted from those taphouses that were still open, apprentices worked to keep ovens and kilns stoked in workshops that needed their fires throughout the night, and folk were already rising to go to bakeries and smokehouses and begin their work for the morning. Squads of Red Plume guards patrolled the streets and kept watch from the battlements of Maalthiir’s keep.

Sarya Dlardrageth looked over the rooftops of the human city and bared her fangs in a malice-filled smile. She’d spent days preparing her counterstroke to Maalthiir’s treachery. Through her mastery of Myth Drannor’s mythal she had summoned hundreds of yugoloths and demons to her banner. She commanded the allegiance of scores upon scores of Malkizid’s devils, outcasts from the Nine Hells who followed the Branded King. Gathered around her was a small horde of infernal monsters: demons and devils stronger than ogres, and invulnerable to anything other than magic spells or enchanted weapons. Some were armed with fearsome claws, fangs, and stingers, others with brazen swords and cruel axes forged in the fires of the pit, and each of them was capable of summoning scathing blasts of hellfire, blinding, choking, or stunning their foes with words of evil power, or calling on even more terrible supernatural powers. And close beside her were three hundred of her most dangerous fey’ri warriors, skilled sorcerers and swordsmen who could fight with blade or spell with equal adeptness.

Maalthiir, the First Lord of Hillsfar, was about to wake to a city far less peaceful and secure than he’d imagined.

“Slay every soul you find in the First Lord’s Tower,” Sarya called to her fiendish horde. “Then tear it down and set the city afire. Now fly, my warriors! Fly!”

With a thunderous beat, Sarya’s fey’ri warband leaped into the air as one. Those demons and yugoloths that could fly followed her fey’ri warriors, while the others simply teleported themselves directly to the battlements of Maalthiir’s citadel. With the swiftness of a stooping dragon Sarya’s winged warriors arrowed over the stout city walls, streaking toward the high tower gleaming in the moonlight.

Fireballs and gouts of hellish flame began to burst down in the city itself, and screams rose in the night as people awoke to a nightmare of fire and claws. Despite her orders, more than a few of her summoned demons had chosen to simply attack the sleeping city. Sarya scowled, but she didn’t try to recall the fiends. Random slaughter and chaos in the streets would serve to confuse Hillsfar’s defenders as to the true nature of the attack.

She and her winged warband reached the First Lord’s Tower, and Sarya alighted on the high terrace that Maalthiir had formerly set aside for use in teleporting to his keep. An ironclad door sealed the tower interior from the open battlements. Sarya gestured to a nycaloth hovering nearby.

“Through there!” she commanded.

“Yes, my queen!” the monster hissed.

It dropped down in front of the iron door and clenched its great talons in the iron plate. With a mighty effort, the hulking creature wrenched the door from its pintle and hurled it across the battlements, sending it crashing to the street. Sarya watched the heavy door shatter the stone steps at the tower’s gate.

Down below the battlements a large band of fey’ri stormed Maalthiir’s front gate, leaving a dozen Red Plumes dead on the steps, hacked down by daemonfey swords or charred by daemonfey spells. More bands of fey’ri and demons assaulted other entrances to the tower, or simply teleported inside.

The nycaloth ducked down and pushed its way into the tower, but a terrible flash of blue light suddenly flared in front of the creature, and a potent symbol shone brightly before it. The nycaloth screeched once and staggered back, its talons raised in front of its eyes—and it froze, motionless, its green scaly hide suddenly growing clear and translucent. In the space of an instant the monster was turned into glass.

Sarya motioned to her fey’ri. “Get rid of that,” she snarled.

A pair of vrocks wrestled the glass nycaloth out of the way, and hurled the petrified creature from the battlements in the same spot where the iron door had been dropped. The nycaloth exploded into countless shards of flying glass below, but Sarya paid the creature no mind. She turned her attention to the symbol guarding Maalthiir’s tower, and she chanted the words of a powerful cancellation spell. The symbol glowed once under the force of her magic before it vanished.

“A potent defense, Maalthiir, but not sufficient to repel my attack,” Sarya gloated.

She stepped aside, and her demons and hellspawned warriors poured into the fortress. Great gouts of hellfire exploded in the doorway, and she heard the ring of steel on steel and screams of terror. Maalthiir doubtless had many arcane defenses within his tower, but he likely had never planned on fighting off the attack of hundreds of demons and hellspawned warriors at one stroke. Towering constructs of stone and iron animated in defense of the first lord’s sanctum. Yugoloths and demons shattered the living statues with their fearsome hellfire. Red Plume guards fought desperately to drive off the attack, only to fall by the score under fey’ri swords and demon claws.

“Find Maalthiir! Slay him!” Sarya cried. “Leave no one alive!”

Powerful spells and wards appeared to slay or block Sarya’s minions, but she and her most skillful sorcerers struck down Maalthiir’s defenses or simply overwhelmed them by hurling yugoloths and demons into the shrieking arcs of destruction until the spells were exhausted. Daemonfey magic shattered walls, broke open vaults, and set the tower burning with hellish red flames that leaped and spread, dancing through the First Lord’s Tower.

For half an hour Sarya and her warriors tore Maalthiir’s burning tower apart, searching for any sign of the first lord or his elite guards. But finally Sarya grudgingly gave up on destroying Maalthiir in person. Even if he had been present at the beginning of the attack, she had no doubt that he would have fled rather than stay to defend his citadel against her attack. She watched over the destruction, delighting in the screams of terror. Maalthiir would not soon forget her visit. And better yet, Xhalph was at that very moment leading an even larger attack against the Red Plumes encamped near the Standing Stone, fifty miles to the south. She had no intention of giving her foes any more set-piece battles, not when she commanded thousands of hellspawned warriors and demons who could appear out of thin air or strike like dragons out of the night sky. Xhalph was under orders to slaughter, not fight—to rake the standards and pavilions in the heart of the Red Plume camp with hellfire and deadly spells, then withdraw with chaos in his wake.

Next, she’d visit the same terror on the Sembians. Then she’d turn her infernal hordes against those wretched humans in Mistledale or Shadowdale, and Evermeet’s accursed army. There would be no disaster at the Lonely Moor to save Evermeet’s traitors from destruction at her hands. With each sunset her armies grew stronger. More and more demons and yugoloths answered her summons and poured through the gates she’d opened in Myth Drannor. The next time Sarya met Evermeet in battle, she did not intend to be defeated.

Maalthiir will not elude me forever, she decided.

She had other things to do that night, and she had harried Hillsfar enough for the time being. Sarya called for her captains and demons, and strode out of Maalthiir’s burning tower into a night that had turned red with fire.

“Well done, my children! Well done!” Sarya cried. She looked back on the inferno that had been Maalthiir’s tower, and the firelight danced in her malevolent green eyes. “Now come away. We have more slaying to do tonight.”

*****

The first three steps into the swirling gray mist seemed harmless enough, though Araevin’s ankles crawled at the sensation of the thick vapor tugging at him as he moved deeper. It felt as if he were wading into a sea, warm and thick as blood. He could see the white tree trunks and silver-green boughs behind him, the fair green hills of silver-tasseled grass rising not far behind him, the pale mossy stones of the road leading back into the luminous depths of the twilit forest. Then Araevin took another step, and he plummeted into darkness.

He cried out and flailed, his senses reeling, transfixed in a moment of endless falling—but then his foot fell on the next step of the road. He stumbled to his knees and found himself on all fours on a path made of dull paving stones covered over with thick, oily black moss. The stink of wet rot assailed his nostrils, and he looked up into a pallid, festering jungle. Sildeyuir’s silver starlight was gone, leaving only a humid, cloying blackness, broken only by the sickly green phosphorescence of huge, rotting toadstools.

The trees are dead, he realized. The great silver-white boles of Sildeyuir’s forest still surrounded him, but they were leprous and gray, choked by more of the black moss and sagging under the weight of parasitic fungi. He had not left Sildeyuir, not really. The gray vapors marked the border of a creeping blight, a monstrous disease consuming an entire world.

His gorge rising at the smell of the place, Araevin pushed himself to his feet and wiped his hands on his cloak. The foul moss left long black smears on the elven graycloth. He turned to look for his companions, and for a horrible moment he saw that he was alone—until Ilsevele suddenly appeared in midair, only an arm’s-reach from where he stood. She gasped aloud and reeled, but Araevin caught her arm and steadied her.