The Sorcerer (39 page)

By the time Takari found a new hiding place, Kuhl had crashed into the enemy lines and was whirling his way down the entrenchment, his darksword opening bugbear bellies left and right, his feet sweeping legs from under elf mind-slaves,

his boot heels crushing the skulls of fallen illithids. Somehow, his free hand had tangled itself in a snarl of beholder eye-stalks, and he was swinging the eye tyrant around like a shield, catching bugbear axes and elven swords on its leathery body.

Takari was alarmed—and a little repulsed—to find herself feeling a secret thrill of delight Though Kuhl showed no sign of slowing down, he had to be hurting. Even through the finest Evereskan armor, the bugbear blows alone would be powerful enough to snap bones and crush skulls. Kuhl would soon fall, and she would have only to stretch out her hand—

No.

Takari did not dare speak the word aloud—not with two beholders hunting her—but she did think it. She was stronger than the curse. She was a wood elf, who knew what was important in life (dancing, honey wine, and jolly company)—and what was not (power, wealth, and authority). She would help Kuhl—if only she could find a way— and they would share the sword.

Kuhl’s helmet came flying out of the melee, its chinstrap broken and its gaudy gold brim buckled by the impact of a bugbear axe. Takari thought that it was done then, that Kuhl would fall beneath the feet of his attackers and vanish.

But the Vaasan bear fought on, reaching the back of the trench and scrambling out onto the hillside. He spun on a knee and lopped the heads off a trio of pursuing bugbears. He smashed a foot into the face of an elf mind-slave and sent him tumbling back into the breastwork. He was free, with no living enemies within a dozen paces of him.

Instead of turning along the back of the trench to attack the enemy’s flank, Kuhl started up the hill into the forest. Takari thought he intended to slay her two hunters, but he ignored the beholders—who did not seem to realize she had escaped their attack and were busy searching for her body in the tree they had toppled—and he angled toward her new

hiding place. Though it seemed impossible he could have seen her move when the beholders had not, his angry bronze eyes went straight to the bough on which she was perched. It had to be the darksword. The weapon could feel her desire for it, and it was leading him to her. Takari might be stronger than the sword’s curse, but Kuhl was not He’d kill her, if she didn’t kill him first

That was nonsense. Kuhl was too heavy to move through the forest canopy like a wood elf. All Takari need do was stay high in the bluetops, out on the bough ends where Kuhl could not follow. What was it that Galaeron had told her? That she had opened herself to her shadow, and that if she killed Kuhl, she would be lost to it. Takari believed him. It was already working hard to claim her, to trick her into murdering the father of her child.

Would it be murder if he died in battle?

The question came to her in her own voice, but so wispy and cold that it sent a chill down her spine.

No one would ever know.

So startled was Takari that at first she didn’t see the illithid climbing out of the entrenchment behind Kuhl. She was preoccupied with the voice, wondering whether someone was eavesdropping on her thoughts or her shadow had already grown strong enough to speak Of course, this distraction was exactly what the voice had intended. By the time she saw what was happening, the illithid had run a dozen steps toward Kuhl, and its mouth tentacles were extending in his direction. Angered by this manipulation, Takari did not think, hesitate, or even consciously aim. She simply drew her bowstring and let fly.

The angle was not a particularly difficult one, at least not for a Green elf ranger who had spent her whole life making exacting shots. The arrow zipped down in Kuhl’s direction, passing a dozen feet over his head but still close enough to make him duck, and it planted itself in the center of the illithid’s mouth tentacles. The creature flew off its feet

backward and crashed to the ground as still as a statue and immediately began to shrivel inward.

How Kuhl reacted, Takari never saw. The deafening boom of a magic blast rumbled up from the forest floor behind her, and she knew without looking that something powerful had found her hiding place. She jumped for a clump of leaves low on the adjacent tree, her stomach rising into her chest and limbs spread to slow her descent, one hand still clutching her bow.

As Takari crashed into the boughs, she was slapped in the back by the giant hand of a blast concussion. It pushed her deep into the tangle of twigs and leaves face first, but she caught a fistful of a branch with her free hand and hooked her legs around another limb as thick as a Vaasan arm.

Takari thought her descent would stop there, but she felt the limb shudder and suddenly found herself falling, staring up at the splintered end of a branch. She had just enough time to wonder why she hadn’t heard it break, then she slammed down on the forest floor and was instantly buried beneath a snarl of leafy boughs.

It took only an instant for Takari to realize why she had not heard the limb shatter and that listening for the enemy would do her no good. Her ears were ringing like a halfling dinner bell. She pushed out from beneath a log and found her last arrow still in her quiver. Takari cautiously climbed for the top of the tangle.

Her shoulders ached, and her legs felt hall numb, but everything moved when she told it to. It was only a moment before she poked her head up to find Kuhl less than a dozen paces away, striding purposefully in her direction. Behind him were the two beholders that had been hunting her, making good use of his preoccupation to float up close for a sure kill.

Takari pushed herself up onto a somewhat steady branch and nocked her last death arrow. Kuhl narrowed his bronze eyes and broke into a sprint, cocking his sword arm to throw

and inadvertently blocking her shot at the beholders. She found her aim drifting to his chest—then she jerked it up and away.

“No.” More loudly, she yelled, “Kuhl, go left!”

Reacting perhaps by instinct or perhaps because he realized that the arrow would already be on its way if it was meant for him, he stepped left—and threw the sword anyway.

Takari cursed his human weakness, set the point of her arrow on the big central eye of the nearest beholder, and let fly. She watched only long enough to see her shaft pass beneath Kuhl’s sword, then she dropped back into the tangle of boughs … and heard a sickly thump behind her.

A howling wind tore at the trees, and Takari knew before she turned to look that Kuhl had not thrown at her, but that he had found the phaerimm she had been hunting.

Ears still ringing, Takari scrambled out the back of the bough tangle and found the phaerimm lying motionless on the ground, opened down the center where Kuhl’s tumbling darksword had split it open. The sword itself lay a few paces beyond the dead thornback, so coated in gore it was barely recognizable.

Takari stretched her hand out, preparing to call the darksword to her grasp. She thought of Kuhl, and waited. He would need the sword to meet the second beholder behind him, and if he had to fight her for it… but the sword did not fly to his hand. It did not even rise, or wobble.

Go ahead—it’s yours now, the dark voice inside whispered. The beholder is coming.

“Be quiet!” Takari hissed.

She turned her palm up and called the darksword to her hand.

With the beholder coming, what choice did she have?

The grim expressions on the high mages’ amber faces as they examined the tattered hem of Hanali Celanil’s stone cloak told Galaeron all he needed to know. The phaerimm had undone too many of the mythal’s ancient spells for his plan to work. Before they could proceed, the circle would have to repair the damage—provided they were willing to make the sacrifice for a city that was not even their own.

Not waiting for the high mages to announce the conclusion themselves, Galaeron turned to Lord Duirsar and the others waiting with him in the shadow of the great statue, and said, “Milord, the phaerimm have done too much damage.” To make himself heard over the battle roar coming from the slopes below, Galaeron nearly had to shout “The

high mages need time to do a high casting, and that means we must be prepared to defend them.”

“If time is all we need, we have this battle won already,” said Kiinyon Colbathin. Like Lord Duirsar and every other Evereskan in the courtyard, Kiinyon was dressed in a full suit of much-dented battle armor that—by the smell of him— he had not shed in the better part of a tenday. “Young Lord Nihmedu’s plan has proven an excellent one. We have only to send the Long Watch down the slope, and we’ll have the enemy trapped.”

“For how long?” asked Storm. She was standing behind Lord Duirsar, towering over his shoulders with Khelben and Laeral. “Any victory here will be short-lived until we repair the mythal. The phaerimm have tens of thousands of their mind-slaves scattered across Evereska, and I’d bet my hair that most of them are on their way here right now.”

“All the more reason to move swiftly,” Kiinyon replied.

He turned toward the back of the courtyard, where the Long Watch was forming into battle ranks as they emerged from Laeral’s teleport circle. He summoned the company commander forward, then turned back to Storm and said, “Once we seize the breastworks, it will not matter how many mind-slaves the phaerimm send against us. Galaeron’s plan is an excellent one, and I’m confident we can hold long enough to see it through.”

“Yes,” Lord Duirsar said, making a point of casting an approving nod in Galaeron’s direction, “you may well have saved us.”

“Not so easily as Master Colbathin suggests, I fear,” Galaeron said. “The mind-slaves below are not the danger.”

“They are,” Kiinyon declared. The commander of the Long Watch—a young Gold elf female named Zharilee— arrived at his side, and he turned and spoke to her. “When the Cold Hand drives the mind-slaves out of their entrenchment, they will have no place to retreat but here. The Long Watch will prevent that, descending through the forest to fall

on them from behind. The enemy will be trapped between two of our companies, and it will be a simple matter to seize the entrenchment for our own use.”

He nodded and waved Zharilee away to execute his order. Galaeron bit his tongue to keep from calling Kiinyon—a former commander who had spent two decades making Galaeron’s life as a Tomb Guard as miserable as possible—a fool.

Instead, Galaeron said, “If s the phaerimm I’m concerned about. They can teleport into the courtyard as easily as we can.”

“Didn’t you say that they wouldn’t do that?” asked Storm. ” “Without their leader, they’ll be too disorganized and busy thinking of themselves to counterattack.’ I’m sure you said that”

“I did.” Galaeron felt the heat come to his face but continued in a sure voice, “And without their leader, that would be so.”

Khelben winced, closed his eyes, and said, “Don’t tell me—”

“The leader survived.”

Galaeron did not explain what had happened, in large part because he didn’t know. Takari might have ignored his order and gone straight after Kuhl’s sword, or she might have gone around the tree to finish the leader off and discovered that he was already gone.

“But it was injured?” Laeral asked.

“Yes,” Galaeron said. “Very badly. It was unconscious for a time.”

“Then it won’t return,” Kiinyon said. He glanced over his shoulder and nodded approvingly as the Long Watch filed down the hill. These phaerimm are cowards at heart. Hurt them once, and they run for cover.”

“Normally, yes.”

As he spoke, Galaeron’s mind was racing. With Kiinyon having committed the Long Watch to battle, any attempt to

recall them would be noticed by the enemy, and it wouldn’t take the phaerimm long to puzzle out why. If Galaeron wanted to foil the counterattack, he would have to find a more subtle way.

“This one was the leader,” he continued. “It will have too much at stake to give up. It’ll be back with all the help it can muster.”

Kiinyon shook his head and started to chide Galaeron for contradicting him, but Lord Duirsar raised a silencing hand.

“How can you know this?” he asked Galaeron. “You speak as though you’ve lived among the phaerimm.”

“Not exactly,” Galaeron said.

Though he knew the dim view his fellow Evereskans were likely to take regarding the source of his information, he explained without hesitation how Melegaunt had passed on his knowledge before dying—and how he had been forced to yield to his shadow before he could retrieve it The tale evoked an expression somewhere between revulsion and pity from Lord Duirsar and plain revulsion from Kiinyon Colbathin.

“So you’re telling us your information comes from the Shadovar?” Kiinyon asked. The last of the Long Watch was disappearing into the forest, and the sound of their first attacks could already be heard rolling up from the far side of the courtyard. “Milord, Galaeron’s intentions have always been good, but his naiveté has made him a pawn of the Shadovar from the start”

Khelben started to defend Galaeron, but Lord Duirsar cut him off by speaking directly to Kiinyon.

“Master Colbathin, did you not say just a moment ago that Lord Nihmedu’s plan was an excellent one?”

Kiinyon scowled but nodded.

“Then I suggest we listen to him.”

“Thank you, milord,” Galaeron said. Though the relief he experienced was for Evereska, he did not try to hide the triumph he felt. “I’m sure Master Colbathin will find he was correct in his first assessment of my plan.”

“I wouldn’t be too impressed with myself,” Kiinyon said. His eyes looked as dangerous as those of any beholder. “Ill recall the Long Watch.”

Galaeron caught him by the elbow. “It’s too late for that”

Kiinyon glared down at the hand on his arm as though he would bite it off.

Galaeron continued to hold it.

“This is what we must do now…”

He explained his idea, emphasizing how important it was that the Chosen save their silver fire until the mythal had been repaired, then he asked, “Any questions?”