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 Faerûn.
“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, finchlike 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 shadow-silk 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.”
CHAPTER SIX
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 Faerûn, 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.
A distant thunder began to roll over the horizon from the direction of the Forest of Wyrms. Laeral assigned her battle mages to ground defense, then took her hippogriff riders into the air to establish a protective screen fifty paces ahead of the shoreline. The thunder grew into the unmistakable roar of pounding boots and growling voices, but the rain clouds were so thick that Laeral couldn’t see their enemies even from a hundred feet above the ground.
The roar grew steadily louder and passed underneath her. Laeral dropped down until she saw first the hazy darkness of land, then thousands of oblong boot prints simply appearing in the mud. Someone had turned the entire army invisible, and that meant phaerimm—probably several of them.
She aimed her palm at the front rank and spoke a few syllables of dispelling magic, and a ten-yard circle of charging bugbears appeared no more than thirty paces from the shoreline.
Several of the battle mages raised their hands in spellcasting, and a mile-long wall of flame rose up to devour the first rank of bugbears. Most fell where they stood, but hundreds of the beasts stumbled forward, roaring in pain and raising huge double-headed axes as they staggered toward the thin line of mages. The first Uthgardts were already splashing ashore to meet the beasts, but the mud was deep, they were few, and time was short.
Laeral pulled a nugget of coal from her spell pocket and flew low in front of the burning bugbears, crumbling the coal into powder and uttering a complicated incantation. The ground turned black and viscous beneath the charging beasts, miring them to their knees, then to their waists and, as they continued to struggle, their chests. Wherever their flaming bodies came into contact with the black sludge, it began to burn as well, and the band was soon filled with roaring scarecrows of orange flame.
At the end of her attack run, Laeral rose into a storm of sling stones and hand axes. None of the attacks penetrated her shielding magic, but the sheer volume was enough to slow her ascent. She turned and found herself staring out over a sea of bugbears and gnolls, all visible the moment some had begun to attack. Pushing through the horde were small bands of beholders and tentacle-faced illithids, coming forward to punch holes in the magic defenses holding their masses at bay.
Of the phaerimm who controlled the army, Laeral saw no sign at all. It was even possible that the illithids and beholders themselves did not know where the creatures were or even that they were there. The phaerimm delighted in using their magic to make other beings do their will, and often the victims were not even aware they were being controlled.
A chorus of shouts drew Laeral’s attention back to the flood-swollen river, where two flights of beholders were bobbing in from the flanks to attack the raft line. She flicked a finger over her thumb ring to activate its sending magic. She pictured the craggy face of the leader of her hippogriff scouts and thought, Aelburn, they’re trying to take the rafts from the flanks.
As you predicted, Milady, came Aelburn’s reply. We’ll turn that against ’em.
Aelburn�
��s mount voiced a series of sharp screeches that caused the scouts to divide into two groups and wheel around to dive on the two flights of beholders from behind. Laeral watched the gray sky to be certain that no phaerimm emerged from the clouds behind her scouts. A tempest of crackling and booming exploded over the river as the mages and clerics on the rafts began to fling spells at the attacking beholders. An instant later, the sound was joined by the screams and shrieks of drowning warriors as the creatures responded with disintegration rays and death beams. Hippogriffs started shrieking and crossbows clacking, and bodies from both sides began to splash into the water.
When Laeral turned back to the main battle, the first beholder was already at the wall of fire, spraying a green ray from its huge central eye and slowly dispelling the magic that had kept it burning. She pointed her fingers down at the creature and tore it apart with ten golden bolts of magic. The battle mages filled the gap with a new curtain of fire even as the first bugbears pushed forward to exploit it, but a dozen beholders more were already floating up to spray the flames with their magic-killing rays.
Laeral pulled a pair of wands from her belt and flew down the line, flinging bolts of magic with one hand and forks of lightning with the other. The nearest beholders died before they could open a breach, but those at the far end extinguished huge swaths of flame, and bugbears and gnolls poured through by the dozens. They were met by storms of fiery meteors and dancing chains of lightning, but the battle mages could not stop them all. The meager bands of Uthgardts were forced to meet them at Laeral’s tar trench, and all too often it was the barbarians who fell. More warriors were rushing up from the second and third waves of rafts, but with the raft convoy still under attack from the beholders the flow would soon stop.
Laeral finished her run and took out the last of the beholders—then turned and found another two dozen assailing the fire wall behind her. She started down the line again and felt a mental jolt as an illithid tried to blast her with its mind numbing powers. Her thought shield held firm against the assault, but she knew it would only be a matter of time before the creature had one of its beholder companions turn its magic-dispelling ray on her and tried again, and that would work.
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