The Siege

by Denning, Troy

  Though Vala had never been particularly shy—and even less so after her time among the elves—Escanor’s gaze made her uncomfortable in a way that even the hungry leers of her own Vaasans never had. Instead of turning away, however, she smiled and cocked a playful eyebrow as she raised her tunic to undo the chest buckles.

  “Never seen a girl take off her wings?”

  Something that resembled a grin crossed the prince’s face. “It was not your wings that caught my eye.” Escanor left the pavilion tent, not coming to her so much as emerging out of the shadows at her side. “You are growing more comfortable with them?”

  “Not comfortable enough to sleep in.” Vala turned her back to the prince, placing the wings more or less in his hands. She let the shadowsilk straps slide through the slots in the back of her tunic, then began to roll her weary shoulders. “We are going to sleep before the assault, aren’t we?”

  “That will be up to you.” Escanor waited for Vala to put herself in order again. When she had, he said, “I have some news.”

  Vala’s heart sank. Her thoughts flew at once to Galaeron and Aris, but when she turned, she asked, “Something has happened at the Granite Tower?”

  It was impossible to say whether Escanor meant his fang-filled smile to be reassuring or mocking. “Not at all. I am speaking of Galaeron.”

  “Galaeron?” Vala said, feigning disappointment. She had been considering this moment since they departed the enclave and had come to the conclusion that there was only one way to play it. “He actually left?”

  The prince’s eyes flared red. “You knew of his plans?”

  “Knew?” Vala shook her head. “I thought it was just shadow talk. He started it after you asked me to come along on this assault. You made him jealous, I think.”

  “And you didn’t tell the Most High?”

  “Why would I tell my personal business to the Most High?”

  “It is not only your business,” Escanor said. “The knowledge he carries belongs to Shade Enclave.”

  Vala smiled and patted him on the cheek. “I guess you should have thought of that before you invited me on this trip.” She picked up her wings and started for her tent. “I’ve got to go wash. When’s dinner?”

  Escanor walked alongside her. “You’re not worried about him?”

  “Should I be?” Vala did not stop walking. In this, above all things, she had to appear indifferent. If Escanor knew how she really felt, he would conceal his knowledge and play on her emotions to make her reveal what she knew. “The Most High had turned him against me. You saw.”

  “Then you can’t tell me where he is?”

  Vala almost smiled. If the Shadovar didn’t know where Galaeron was, he was still free. “I’d watch for him at Evereska, were I you.”

  “That is the obvious choice, of course,” Escanor said, “but he knows we have an army there. We were thinking he might have intended to go to Waterdeep, instead.”

  “Might have,” Vala said. From the little she had overheard after leaving the dinner, that had in fact been Galaeron’s plan. “It’s going to be hell finding him. Anauroch’s a big desert.”

  “Particularly on foot. We found their veserab and flying disk, with all of their water—but no sign of them.” Escanor took Vala’s arm and stopped her. “If you know where they’re going, you must tell me—for their own sakes. Without their waterskins, they won’t last a tenday, even if they can find the oases.”

  “Then they won’t last a tenday,” Vala said.

  Though Escanor was right about their chances of surviving Anauroch—at least about Aris’s—the Shadovar had already guessed the little she knew, so there was nothing to be gained by admitting her own small involvement.

  She glared at the dark hand grasping her arm expectantly and said, “At least it will save me the trouble of hunting Galaeron down after he is completely lost to his shadow.”

  Escanor released her arm. “You truly don’t know where they are?”

  “Isn’t that what I said?”

  “And you are not in love with Galaeron?”

  “I have more self-respect than that.” As she told this lie, Vala made a point of staring directly into the prince’s eyes. “All I am to him is a promise.”

  Escanor surprised her with an obviously sincere smile. “Just as I told the Most High.” He waved her toward his tent. “Please, you will stay here tonight. It will be more comfortable.”

  “Comfortable?” Though Vala was cringing inside, she forced a playful half-smirk. “Don’t you think we need our sleep tonight?”

  “When we are done, you will sleep like a lioness after her kill,” Escanor replied, showing his fangs. “In truth, I had thought your flirtations no more than a low attempt to mask your betrayal behind a veneer of desire, but I see now that Melegaunt’s reports about the women of Vaasa were not exaggerated.”

  “Reports?” Vala demanded.

  “That you are always in season,” Escanor said. He took her hand affectionately between his. “Bodvar’s daughter was a favorite of his.”

  “Bodvar’s daughter?” Vala pondered this for a moment, then gasped, “Granna?”

  “Have no fear. Even if Melegaunt is your grandfather, we are many generations apart. Our blood is hardly the same at all.” He pulled her toward his pavilion. “Clear my tent!”

  Vala stopped cold. “Wait!”

  Escanor’s eyes flared red. “You are not sincere?”

  “I’m always sincere,” Vala said, grimacing inwardly at the distasteful looks the Shadovar cast her way as they streamed from the pavilion tent, “but we’ve been on the wing for four days and pulling shadow all day for a fifth. I’ve got to wash.”

  “I have water in my tent,” Escanor said. “You can wash here.”

  “ ‘Wash’ is a figure of speech,” Vala said. While hardly above sharing a man’s bed for her own reasons, she was not in the practice of allowing herself to be ordered into one. The prince was pushing too hard, too fast. He was up to something, and she had to buy time to puzzle out what. “What I really have to do is—”

  “You can do that in the garderobe behind my tent,” Escanor interrupted. “It opens into the Gray Wastes.”

  “All right,” Vala said, feigning surrender, “but we’ve got to eat first. I’m famished, and with the day we have tomorrow—”

  “That will be no concern to you,” Escanor said, leading her into the empty pavilion. “A prince’s consort is not expected to fight.”

  “What?” Finally seeing her opening, Vala stopped. “Consort?”

  “Of course,” Escanor said. “We Shadovar are not barbarians. We do not cast a woman aside after we have used her.”

  “And I have to stop fighting?”

  Escanor shook his head. “Not at all. A consort may fight at her own pleasure—but it is not expected.” He waved her toward depths at the back of the tent. “If you please. I will have food brought later.”

  Vala refused to cross the threshold. “What about Sheldon?”

  “Your son?” Escanor asked. “He will be brought to the enclave and raised in my house as a High Lord. Will that not please you?”

  Vala needed to consider this only a moment before she shook her head. “No, he is Vaasan.”

  “Very well, he will remain in Vaasa,” Escanor replied. “Whatever you wish, Vala.”

  Vala turned to look at him. “Whatever I wish?”

  “For a consort of the First Prince, anything,” Escanor said. “You could even return to Vaasa yourself—with Bodvar’s debt repaid in full.”

  It was nearly enough to make Vala step into the tent. She had been gone from the Granite Tower for more than a year and longed for nothing more than to return to raise her son and see her aging parents—and that was what made the prince’s offer too good to be true. He wanted more from her than to share the fur. There were a thousand courtesans in the Palace Most High that he could have for a smile, and most were—though it stung her pride to admit it—far more desirable
than she.

  She stepped away from the tent and narrowed her eyes at Escanor. “What does all this generosity cost me? My life? My will?”

  Escanor spread his hands. “Nothing, if your desire is true.”

  “Let’s say it isn’t.”

  “Then there is a much easier way to secure the same privileges,” Escanor said, dodging the question. “Just tell me what you know about Galaeron’s disappearance.”

  “I already have,” Vala said. “Beyond that, I don’t know anything that would help you.”

  “Allow me to be the judge of that,” Escanor said. “You cannot know what might help us.”

  Vala was tempted. She was almost telling the truth anyway. If Galaeron wasn’t going to Waterdeep—and apparently he wasn’t, since the Shadovar couldn’t find him—then she was at a loss. Escanor was right, though, in that she couldn’t know what might help them find the fleeing elf—or implicate those who had stayed behind. However she looked at it, she would be betraying her companions at least in spirit, if not in fact.

  “Let’s try this,” Vala said. “Tell me what you know, and I’ll tell you if anything I know can help.”

  Escanor surprised her by laughing—not a cold, threatening chuckle, but a warm, almost respectful guffaw.

  “You are a brave woman, Vala Thorsdotter,” he said, clamping a big hand on the back of her neck. “I do not want to see what will become of you if the Most High learns you have refused to recant your betrayal.”

  Vala’s legs grew icy, and she looked down to see herself melting into the shadows at her feet. “What are—”

  That was as far as she made it before her consciousness vanished into cold darkness. Sometime later—it could have been a second or an hour, Vala had no way of telling—she felt the humid Myth Drannor air warming first her face, then her body, and finally her legs. She saw herself rising from a puddle of darkness, her body returning to its normal proportions. When she dared to raise her gaze again, she found herself standing atop the shadow blanket, surrounded by the murk-veiled towers and trees of Myth Drannor. Standing half-glimpsed at varying distances along the narrow street, were dozen of companies of Shadovar warriors.

  Still holding Vala by the neck, Escanor pulled her around the corner of a huge, castlelike ruin into a tree-choked courtyard that had once served as the building’s main entrance. There was a single attached tower to the left and an L-shaped wing on the right, all cloaked in the same mantle of darkness as the trees and the ground itself. A dozen Shadovar warriors stood near the entrance of the courtyard with their weapons and wands in hand and a nervous officer watching Escanor approach.

  Sensing that she would not like whatever the prince had in mind, Vala allowed her hand to drift toward her sword hilt—and felt Escanor’s iron grasp tighten on her neck.

  “You saved my life once,” he hissed. “Do not make me return the favor by snapping your neck.”

  “It’s dark,” Vala said. “Just wanted to see what’s going on.”

  “Truly,” Escanor sneered. He stopped in front of the nervous-looking officer. “This is the Irithlium?”

  The warrior inclined his head. “It is, Prince.”

  “Good.” Escanor thrust Vala forward. “Tell her what we’ve been able to learn about this place.”

  The officer nodded and turned to Vala. “Not much, Lady Thorsdotter. It was once a magic school, which naturally attracted the phaerimm. The upper layers seem to have been stripped bare, but there are at least six phaerimm lairing somewhere beneath the foundations.”

  “Six phaerimm?” Vala gasped, understanding why the patrol looked so nervous. “In one building?”

  The officer nodded. “Our assignment is to map their lairs.”

  “No,” Escanor said, “now your mission is to slay them.”

  The officer’s topaz eyes paled to citrine. “Slay them, Prince?”

  “There is nothing to fear, my servant.” Escanor thrust Vala toward him. “I brought you a new scout. You may contact me to request another if she falls.”

  The officer raised his brow at this, then nodded and said, “As you order, my prince.”

  Escanor turned to Vala. “You said you wished to fight,” he said. “If you change your mind, you know what you must do.”

  “I won’t change my mind,” Vala said, glaring at him.

  “Of course not,” Escanor said. He dismissed a young Shadovar from the patrol, then took the warrior’s horned helmet and passed it to Vala. “This will prevent the phaerimm from controlling you—and if you should happen to change your mind, all you need do is touch the flat of your blade to a horn.”

  Vala accepted the helmet and used it to replace her own. “And if I don’t?”

  “Then I will report your death in battle to the Most High,” Escanor said. “The Granite Tower will be informed of your bravery and devotion to duty.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Vala said. “What do I get if we kill all the phaerimm? The same deal I would’ve by going into your tent?”

  “If you kill six phaerimm?” Escanor’s grin showed the tips of his fangs. “If you kill six phaerimm, then I will be your consort.”

  Laeral stepped out of the forest mud onto the damp sand at Anauroch’s edge, nearly three hundred miles away. Though she had known in principle what to expect, so stunned was she by the size of the dark orb in front of her that, in her teleport afterdaze, she grew confused and thought she had somehow arrived outside the Plane of Shadow. Just translucent enough to make out the silhouettes of foothills rising ridge after ridge, the murky sphere was as wide as the horizon itself and so high that only a slim crescent of cloudy gray sky hung above it.

  Laeral was jarred out of her awestruck muddle when Chief Claw stumbled into her from behind, nearly flipping his body over her shoulder and growling an Uthgardt curse. Recalling that there would soon be a whole stream of soldiers pouring out of the teleport circle, she quickly stepped aside and grabbed the barbarian’s enormous wrist.

  “It’s the shadowshell,” she said, trying in vain to pull him aside. “You’re outside the Sharaedim, remember?”

  “Charideem,” Claw repeated absently, head rolling backward as he struggled to take in the enormous dome of darkness rising above him. “The Great Dark Mountain!”

  Lord Yoraedia blinked into existence behind Chief Claw and slammed into the barbarian’s back as he walked forward.

  “Corellon’s arrows!”

  Yoraedia stepped back, reaching for his sword—and was promptly knocked forward again when Skarn Brassaxe crashed into him from behind.

  “What? Who?” the dwarf cried. “Where in the Underdark—”

  “The shadowshell, remember?” Laeral set her feet and jerked Chief Claw aside, then released him and grabbed both Brassaxe and Yoraedia. “Snap out of it, good sirs, or our army is going to start teleporting in on top of itself—and if you think the Trade Way was a mess, wait until you see what happens when an elf and a dwarf try to occupy the same space!”

  “Don’t want that!” Claw said, recovering his wits.

  The chief turned and literally began to toss the other commanders out of the teleport circle as they arrived. Laeral spent another moment with Yoraedia and Brassaxe, helping them overcome their teleport afterdaze by reminding them where they were. When they finally seemed to recall what they were supposed to be doing, she assigned them each a sector to keep clear, then helped the next batch of arrivals through the transition. She had rehearsed the entire plan with her commanders before creating the teleportation circle in the Forest of Wyrms, but with only three hours to march the entire relief army through an area little more than five feet in diameter, there was no margin for error.

  Finally growing confident that her commanders had the situation under control, Laeral turned to inspect the area. Though hardly pouring rain, the weather was still overcast and drizzly, and she could barely make out the main Shadovar camp, positioned for easy defense atop a low butte at Anauroch’s edge. The murky silhou
ettes of several dozen sentries stood at the brink of the cliff, using their dark spears to point down at the arriving army while their astonished comrades rushed up behind them.

  Laeral raised an arm and waved at the astonished sentries, then used a sending spell to address the closest one. Give your prince the compliments of Laeral Silverhand and tell him the Army of the North has arrived.

  The warrior cocked his head in surprise, then raised his spear in acknowledgement and turned to go. It shall be done.

  Laeral nodded and started across the damp sand toward the shadowshell. Though still more than a quarter of a mile away, the edifice’s imposing size made it feel like something natural, more along the lines of the High Ice or the Spine of the World than something created by the magic of men. Stationed at its base every half mile or so were small patrols of Shadovar warriors mounted on their strange flying worms, paying more attention to Laeral and her relief army than to the rocky slopes inside the dark sphere. It was too murky to tell whether the drizzle was also falling inside the shell, but the few withered trees visible through the barrier suggested that something was turning the Sharaedim as lifeless as Anauroch.

  As Laeral drew nearer the shadowshell, her faint shadow darkened and split into three identical silhouettes. A pair of gleaming metallic eyes appeared in the heads of the two outer shapes, then they slowly assumed the shapes of two Shadovar warriors. She stopped and addressed the broad-shouldered figure on the left.

  “A pleasure to see you again, Prince Clariburnus.”

  The prince’s lead-colored eyes lit with pleasure, then his silhouette peeled itself off the ground and, still expanding into its normal form, bowed.

  “Clariburnus, please.” He gestured at the other prince, a gaunt figure with talonlike fingers and eyes the color of rusty iron. “My brother, Lamorak.”

  Also returning to shape, Lamorak bowed and said, “Your arrival is a welcome surprise.” He cast a meaningful glance toward the growing horde of warriors spilling from Laeral’s teleportation circle. “We were given to believe it would be some time yet before you arrived with your army.”