The Summoning (19 page)

The beam flashed across Galaeron’s shoulder. He began to fall, but spared himself a long plummet by catching hold of Aris’s tool belt. The beholder tried to cry the alarm, but, with its mouth full of shadow gum, managed only a garbled babble.

Looping one arm through the giant’s belt, Galaeron drew his sword and braced himself to fight the monster—then gasped as Aris’s far hand descended out of the haze and grabbed Kanabar. The beholder looked like a riys melon in the giant’s palm.

“Friend indeed!” growled the giant.

The beholder mumbled something unintelligible as Aris smashed it into the cliff.

‘Thank the leaflord!” Galaeron gasped. “I didn’t know if his ray would work on his own charm magic.”

“It did,” said Aris. “But I fear you have doomed yourself for naught, elf.”

The giant pointed to a trio of round forms drifting toward them out of the haze. Galaeron looked behind him and saw another pair, and yet two more rising into the cloud beneath them. He sheathed his sword, then plucked two more threads off the shadow silk Melegaunt had given him.

“This seemed like a better idea from down there.”

“1 imagine so,” said Aris. “Should they becharm me again….”

“No offense taken,” said Galaeron. “Do as I say, and it won’t come to that.”

He dropped first one, then two shadow threads and repeated Melegaunt’s spell twice in rapid succession. Though he had learned to do multiple castings at the Academy of Magic, it was the one technique that had not come easily for him—and that had prompted him to practice it until it came even more naturally than everything else. The two enchantments worked perfectly though he was starting to grow tired and felt like the coldness of the new magic would crack his bones.

An alarmed gurgle rose from the beholders as they were engulfed in shadow morass, then they collided with each other and stuck fast. Without waiting to see what effect this would have on the others—though he prayed it would give them pause—Galaeron pointed toward the far end of the pass and cast his most powerful spell. A numbing wave of cold magic rushed through his bones, then a black square appeared just below him and to the side.

“Through the door!” he ordered.

Aris peered down. “I can’t fit—”

“Now!” Still holding onto the belt, Galaeron leaped for the square and hoped the giant would follow. “Jump!”

With a deep bellow, Aris released the cliff and obeyed. Galaeron glimpsed a blue ray sweeping through the clouds toward his magic door, then they plummeted into darkness.

A sudden chill bit at his flesh, and there was a dark eternity of falling. Galaeron grew queasy and weak, heard the stillness of his own heart. His head reeled, his thoughts dissolved into a jumble of ill-defined fears, and he was back in the world, plunging through a howling tempest of white. A deafening bellow filled the air behind him. Galaeron glanced back to find a huge gray figure plummeting alongside him, then a circle of treetops flashed past and the world erupted into a cacophony of cracking and snapping. They tumbled groundward, flipping first one way, then another as they were snagged by passing branches. Galaeron tried to push away from the mountainous figure and found he could not.

In the next instant, he crashed down on the giant and lay in a daze, struggling to recall where he was and where he had come from. A low groan shook the air around him, then he started to swing groundward as the enormous body rolled to its back.

The spell’s afterdaze vanished in a flash, and Galaeron knew instantly where he was—and who he was with. “Aris, wait!”

The giant gave a startled cry and stopped mid roll. “Elf?”

“The very one.” Galaeron pulled his arm free and dropped into the snow. “Are you all right?”

“For now.” The giant pointed into the storm.

Galaeron scrambled up and peered over Aris’s hip. The moon-shaped silhouette of a beholder was careening toward them through the storm, coming so fast it was bouncing into tree trunks.

“Do something!” Aris urged. “Another spell!”

“I don’t think 1 can.” Galaeron was so exhausted from the cold magic that had already passed through him that he could not stop shivering. “I’m too tired.”

‘Tired?” Aris boomed, clawing through the snow in search of a boulder. “Rest when you’re dead!”

Seeing the wisdom in the giant’s argument, Galaeron plucked another thread off his ribbon of shadow silk. He tossed it the beholder’s direction and started the spell—then cried out in shock as the cold magic gushed into him. His entire body went icy numb and puffed up to half-again its normal size. When he continued the spell, his skin went as rigid as marble and turned as pale as snow. He choked out another word, and his lips grew so stiff and cold that he could barely utter the last syllable.

The beholder instantly became a massive ball of gummy black shadow—then returned to normal when a cone of blue light shot through the blizzard to engulf it from behind.

“There!” Arts pointed at a smaller, more indistinct silhouette trailing the first “Do two, like you did before!”

“1-1 can’t.”

Even as Galaeron said it, he was pulling two more strands off the shadow silk. This time, when he opened himself to the new magic, it blasted straight through him, and his body erupted into molten pain. Galaeron hurled himself screaming into the snow and rolled back and forth. There was no sizzle of melting snow nor hiss of rising steam, but the world suddenly turned very gray and dark, as though he were looking at it through a veil of smoke.

“Elf?” Aris glanced back and gave a bewildered frown, then rolled to his knees with a boulder in his hand. “Elf, do you have a friend here?”

Fighting through the pain, Galaeron pushed himself up and looked in the direction of the beholders. His smoky vision made everything look doubly hazy in the blizzard, but even given that, the first eye tyrant was so close the eyestalks were visibly writhing atop its head. The second was close enough that he could make out the shape of its big central eye, and behind it—for behind—was a figure on horseback. It was hardly a ghost, too faint to tell whether it was Vala or Melegaunt, but one of them.

“The fool!” He struggled to his feet and drew his sword. “Yes, that would be my friend—a friend who shouldn’t be here, but a truer one for it.”

“What very good news.” The giant sounded less exhilarated than he might have. “Then all we must do is survive until he arrives.”

Aris hurled his boulder, which soared through the woods and arced down toward the lead beholder. An eye swiveled on the top of its head, then a ray of silver light shot up to intercept the attack. The rock exploded into a spray of pebbles. Judging that they had about two seconds until the creature was close enough to use the ray on them, Galaeron lurched over behind a tree. His legs were numb and sluggish, and the sword in his hand felt more like an awkward orcish blade than one forged in elven fire.

“Keep attacking!” said Galaeron. “Keep their attention focused on us.”

“That shouldn’t be hard.”

The giant hurled another boulder, only to have it demolished by another silver ray. Galaeron dashed forward and took shelter behind a slender canyon spruce, then nearly lost his head as a silver beam slashed through the trunk. The top crashed down in front of the beholders, creating a small camouflage barrier. Galaeron hurled himself beneath the boughs and lay very still, relying on the camouflaging magic of his cloak to conceal him until he could attack.

“Elf!” Aris sounded panicked. “What are you doing?”

Galaeron didn’t answer, until the blue light of an anti-magic ray washed over his shoulder and neutralized his cloak’s concealing magic. He rolled out on Aris’s side of the fallen tree just as the large beholder sank down on the other side, now using its silver ray to disintegrate a ten-foot swath of boughs.

Galaeron sprang back at the beholder, crashing through the boughs atop the trunk, touching down long enough to spring over and come down on top of the beholder. He

brought his sword around and cut half a dozen eyestalks off the head, then whipped the blade around in an arc and drove it into the eye tyrant’s skull.

The blade sank to the depth of his thumb, then stopped cold.

“Elf!” Aris let out a sharp huff as he hurled another boulder, then bellowed, “Are you mad?”

Galaeron felt more than saw the boulder sailing past his head, then, heard it crackle into a thousand pieces and realized the second beholder was close on him. He flung himself off the first, pulling his weapon free as he dived. His arm skipped over a rock, then he landed headfirst, rolled, came up beneath a big spruce, and found both beholders facing him. If the big one was troubled by the green gore pumping from its severed eyestalks, it showed no sign.

Galaeron raised his sword—and promptly found his view blocked by Melegaunt’s broad back. There was just enough time to notice how strange it seemed that the wizard had a dark, well defined shadow in the flat blizzard light before both beholders blasted the dusky man with their silver rays.

“No!” Galaeron raised his sword and sprang forward to avenge what he knew would be the end of Evereska. Something snagged his foot as he tried to cross Melegaunt’s shadow, and he fell flat on his face. “By the Red Moon!”

Quite certain the next instant would be his last, he looked down and found the wizard’s shadow holding his ankle.

“You’ve done your part,” said Melegaunt’s familiar voice.

No sooner had the wizard spoken than a set of muffled hoof beats came pounding through the forest. Instead of attacking Galaeron, the big beholder spun to face the sound— then died without a shriek as Vala’s black sword came flying from the opposite direction and cleaved it down the center.

The smaller beholder spun all ten eye tentacles in the direction from which the sword had come, only to be driven to the ground when Malik came flying off his horse from behind and began slashing eyestalks with his dagger.

Galaeron scrambled to his feet and rushed to help, but by then Vala was already on the creature. She extended one hand to summon her sword, used the other to crush an eye when the stalk swung in her direction, then caught the weapon and drove the tip through the beholder’s skull. Unlike Galaeron’s blade, hers sank to the hilt.

“Elf?” Aris’s looming figure peered over the fallen tree, a big boulder grasped in each hand. “Elf, are you alive?”

“For now.”

Galaeron turned to see Melegaunt’s mangled body dissolving into shadow, and his shadow coalescing into a healthy body.

“Melegaunt, you were not to risk your life,” Galaeron said. “We agreed for the sake of Evereska.”

“Aye,” said the wizard. “But after you troubled yourself so dearly to save him, how could I let the giant die?”

G

27 Nightal, the Year of the Unstrung Harp

‘Galaeron felt himself jerk, then felt the hand clamped over his shoulder and knew that—impossibly—an intruder had crept up on him during his own watch. He rolled away from the tree he had been leaning against and tangled in a heavy cloak in which he did not recall covering himself.

“To your weapons!” Even as he yelled the alarm, he feared he was too late. “They’re on us!”

Despite the entangling cloak, Galaeron somehow rolled to his knees and faced his attacker. He found himself looking at three bewildered humans and a very concerned stone giant.

“It’s only us, Galaeron,” said Vala. “That must have been some dream.”

“Dream?” Galaeron threw off the cloak and, searching the woods behind them, reached for his

sword. “I wasn’t dreaming. How could I have been dreaming?”

Vala rolled her eyes. “That’s what people do when they sleep.”

“That’s what humans do when they sleep,” Galaeron corrected. He was not sure which implication he resented more, that humans were Tel’Quess—of the People—or that he had neglected his duty by sleeping on his watch. “And I was not sleeping!”

“No?” It was the little round-faced man with the bulging eyes who asked this. Galaeron needed a moment recall what he was doing with them. “Then what are you doing when you close your eyes and snore?”

The night did seem oddly bright, Galaeron realized. He frowned and looked eastward, where an amorphous sphere of light hung just above the Greypeak Mountains. Even through the thick mantle of concealing snow clouds, there could be little doubt that the glowing pearl was the morning sun.

“I fell asleep?” The alarm in Galaeron’s voice was unmistakable. “In the middle of my watch?”

“Don’t feel bad.” Vala gathered his cloak off the snow and offered it to him. “Malik took over, and you needed the rest.”

Galaeron accepted the cloak and dropped to his haunches. After two days without a Reverie, there was no denying he needed rest. But to fall asleep—by accident? He suddenly began to feel lost and hollow, as though something inside had vanished.

“Why so worried?” Melegaunt came to his side. “Elves do sleep. I’ve seen them.”

“Occasionally,” said Galaeron. “When we’re sick or wounded, sometimes when we’re despondent or fall prey to the Gloom, more often as we grow older and the time to go West draws near.”

Vala nodded. “When you need to escape your pain and rest. Not so different from humans.”

“Much the same,” allowed Galaeron, “except that we never fall asleep. It’s a purposeful act.”

“What a joy that must be,” exclaimed Malik. “Me, I am always lying awake when I should be sleeping and sleeping when I should be awake. This year alone, it has nearly cost me my life a dozen times.” He hesitated a moment, his mouth contorting oddly as he struggled not to say more, then he blurted, “I hardly dare close my eyes for fear of having my throat cut by that Harper witch Ruha!”

Galaeron frowned. The Harpers were among the few humans generally accorded admittance to Evereska, and the mere fact that one of them counted Malik an enemy was reason to be suspicious of him. On the other hand, the little man had risked his own life to save Galaeron and Aris from the beholders, and any trouble between humans was no business of the tomb guard’s or Evereska’s.