The Siege

by Denning, Troy

  They reached Dawnsglory Pond, where Khelben turned uphill toward Cloudhome, Lord Duirsar’s citadel. Burlen and Kuhl started after him at once, but Keya stopped and turned down the slope toward the Livery Gate.

  Dexon caught her arm and motioned up the hill. “Lord Blackstaff went this way.”

  “I know,” Keya said, pointing down the hill, “but I must go that way.”

  “Then you’re not coming with us?” Dexon looked almost as confused as he did relieved.

  Keya shook her head. “My place is with the Long Watch.”

  “The Long Watch?” Dexon gasped. “But they’ve no training!”

  Keya frowned. “More than you know,” she said, raising her chin. “Our hearts are brave. We’ll give a good accounting of ourselves.”

  “For as long as it takes the phaerimm to cast one spell!” Dexon objected, trying to pull her up the hill. “The Long Watch is fodder. You’re coming with us.”

  Keya twisted her arm free. “No, Dex, you were right. I don’t belong in Khelben’s company.”

  She grabbed his shoulders and pulled herself up to kiss him on the lips, then let go and dropped back to the ground a pace away.

  “I’ll see you after the battle,” she said.

  “If we win,” Dexon said, shaking his head and starting after her. “I can’t let you—”

  “Yes, Dexon, you can, and you will.” Khelben’s strong hand caught him by the shoulder and pulled him back. “Say your farewells.”

  Dexon’s eyes grew a little glassy, then he kissed his beefy fingers and turned them toward Keya. “Till swords part.”

  Keya smiled and returned the gesture. “Back soon for soft songs and bright wine.”

  Khelben pushed Dexon into the arms of his waiting companions. He made a shooing motion and mumbled something Keya did not quite catch.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “What was that?”

  “Just the usual,” Khelben said, turning away. “Sweet water and light laughter.”

  To Keya, that didn’t sound like what he’d mumbled. Not even close.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  20 Mirtul, the Year of Wild Magic

  Loose!”

  Keya released her bowstring on command. Her arrow hissed skyward with a thousand others, passing through the mythal and arcing down toward the thin line of beholders and phaerimm floating out in the Vine Vale. Shimmering rays of disintegration magic swept back and forth across the volley, dissolving hundreds of shafts before they neared the blackened vineyards. One of the mythal’s golden meteors came streaking down from the heavens and burned a twenty-foot swath through the sizzling cloud of sticks. Hundreds of missiles missed their targets and planted themselves in the soil like a crop of newly sprouted feather sticks. Of the few dozen arrows that found their marks, most were deflected by powerful shielding magic and clattered harmlessly to ground, but a few enchanted shafts penetrated the phaerimm defenses and lodged themselves deep in enemy bodies.

  One phaerimm and two beholders went limp and began to sink toward the ground, then a fierce counterattack blossomed against the mythal and prevented Keya from seeing if they recovered. She nocked another arrow—the last in her quiver—and awaited the next command. Like the rest of the Long Watch, she was standing inside the Meadow Wall with nothing between her and the enemy but the battered mythal and seventy paces of open ground—close enough that when she was not trying to blink the magic-dazzle from her eyes, she could see the big central eyes of the attacking beholders.

  What Keya could not see were any bugbears, illithids, captured elves, or any other phaerimm mind-slaves. There were only the thornbacks themselves—less than two hundred in the whole vale, according to rumor—and perhaps a thousand beholders. With a full ten thousand elves ringing the city, it definitely appeared that the odds favored Evereska, but where the phaerimm were concerned, appearances were always deceiving. The mind-slaves could be anywhere, lurking invisibly on the other side of the Meadow Wall or hiding in tunnels under the Vine Vale, ready to burrow under the elven defenses the instant their masters weakened the mythal.

  “Loose!” came the command.

  Keya set her aim on the eye of the closest beholder and released her bowstring. She lost sight of her arrow as it joined the dark cloud sailing into the Vine Vale, but she chose to believe that hers was the shaft that survived to plant itself between two of her target’s writhing eyestalks. Another phaerimm spell-storm exploded against the mythal.

  An arrow runner lifted Keya’s empty quiver off her belt and replaced it with a full one. She grabbed the next shaft and was horrified to feel green, moist wood. To save Evereska, even the trees had to sacrifice—not that they would live long if the mythal fell. She slipped the nock onto her bowstring and raised the tip to the air.

  The phaerimm began to retreat, fleeing so fast that one flew into a mythal-meteor and vanished in a golden flash. In the next instant, a cone of sparkling gray flame shot out from behind the Meadow Wall, engulfing a pair of phaerimm who had made the mistake of drifting into a single line. They erupted into screeching tornadoes of silver fire.

  Khelben Arunsun appeared at the Meadow Wall where the cone had originated, his hand still pointing at the two burning phaerimm. In the next instant, the Vaasans and the rest of the archmage’s escort appeared to both sides of him, all grunting with effort as they hurled a flight of golden javelins after the fleeing phaerimm. The beholders caught the first wave of spears in their disintegration rays, which only turned them into pure magic and sent them streaking into their targets with the speed of lightning bolts. The second wave followed a little more slowly, but two dozen weapons found their marks. Three phaerimm dropped to the ground and disintegrated into piles of dust, and two more were injured so badly they teleported away.

  The surviving thornbacks came streaking back, driving their beholder slaves ahead of them and hurling such a spell tempest at the mythal that Keya had to turn her face away from the heat of the dissipating magic. Khelben and his escort simply laughed and strolled calmly away from the Meadow Wall, their backs to the enemy. They passed through the Long Watch lines not twenty paces from where Keya stood awaiting the command to loose her next arrow. If Dexon—or any of the Vaasans—noticed her standing in line, they did not betray the fact by looking in her direction.

  “Well done, Khelben!” chortled Kiinyon Colbathin. “Five this time!”

  “Yes,” Khelben answered. “If we had forty hours and a thousand Corellon’s Bolts, we could kill them all—but we don’t. We’re not going to save the mythal by teleporting in to attack once every hour.”

  “What do you suggest, Lord Blackstaff?” asked a familiar voice.

  Keya glanced over her shoulder and found Lord Duirsar standing a dozen yards behind her with Kiinyon Colbathin and what remained of Evereska’s Hill Elders. They were surrounded by the Company of the Cold Hand, a hundred hand-picked Spellblades chosen to wield the sixteen darkswords borrowed from the Vaasans who had fallen when the phaerimm escaped their ancient prison. Because the weapons would freeze the hand of any wielder not of the owning family, the idea was that the first warrior would use the weapon until his hand grew too cold to hold it, then pass it to the next, and so forth.

  Khelben stepped to Lord Duirsar’s side. “We must carry the attack into the Vine Vale, and soon.”

  “Leave the mythal?” Colbathin gasped. “Do you know how many warriors we’ll lose?”

  “A fraction of what we’ll lose if we let them wear it down and enter Evereska,” Khelben countered. “The shadowshell has already weakened it, and this battle is draining it by the minute.” He turned to Lord Duirsar. “Milord, even if Evereska had arrows and magic enough to squander in this way, the mythal won’t last. We must reduce the enemy.”

  “You forget that we will be reduced ourselves, tenfold,” Kiinyon objected. “Surely, it is better to take what kills we can from the safety of the mythal—”

  “Do those pointed ears not hear, elf?” roared Khelben. “The
mythal won’t last!”

  In spite of herself, Keya found her attention wandering from Khelben and the high lords to her cherished Dexon. To her dismay, the Vaasan had noticed her as he passed through the lines of the Long Watch—was, in fact, studying her with the dark look of an angry bear, holding his darksword across his breast and towering over not only the elves, but Khelben and even his fellow Vaasans. Even the night before, when she had spent so many hours climbing over that massive body, she had not realized just how large—how brutish—a man he really was.

  When he noticed her watching him, Dexon gave a melancholy smile and extended an index finger in her direction. At first, Keya thought he was trying to use elven fingertalk, but then she sensed someone looking over her shoulder and realized he was pointing. She looked forward again to find Zharilee, the sun elf who commanded her company, standing in front of her impatiently tapping a long finger on her extravagant armor of gold scales.

  “Truly, Keya, it is nothing to me if you are attracted to these hairy brutes, but I insist that you leave the flirting until after the battle.” Zharilee turned away, then raised her magic command horn to her lips and shouted, “Loose!”

  Keya drew her bowstring back and sent an arrow arcing over the Meadow Wall into the blinding storm of flame and lightning that was the Vine Vale. She reached for another of the green shafts in her quiver.

  “Hold!”

  The command came not from Zharilee, but from Kiinyon Colbathin himself—and he sounded none too happy.

  “Split by ranks, swords the first, spears the second, bows the third.”

  Heart leaping into her throat, Keya slung her bow over her shoulder and pulled her spear out of the ground beside her. Khelben’s argument had prevailed, and Lord Duirsar had given the order to leave the mythal to engage the phaerimm. A low, ground-shaking rumble rolled up from the rear as the elite companies trotted up to take attack positions behind the Long Watch.

  Even had Keya not learned tactics on her father’s knee, she would have known what was happening. As the most inexperienced element of Evereska’s military, the Long Watch would lead the charge over the wall and absorb the brunt of the phaerimm attack. With any luck, the elite companies following behind would reach the enemy ranks intact and force the thornbacks to engage in their least favorite kind of combat—close.

  Though Keya desperately wanted to steal a last glance over her shoulder at Dexon, she resisted the temptation. Looking at him would only make him worry about her when he should be thinking of killing their enemies. As the rightful wielder of a darksword, he was one of Evereska’s most potent weapons against the phaerimm. His shadowy blade could cut through even their mightiest defenses, and he already had three of their tails tucked into his belt to prove he knew how to get close enough to use it.

  “Long Watch, charge in three ranks!”

  Keya counted a one second delay, then set her spear tip at a slight incline and started forward at a two-stepper-second run—swift enough to cover ground quickly, but not so fast that the charge would disorganize their formation. Instead of starting forward to meet the charge, the phaerimm and beholders hung back, content to hurl spells at the mythal and create a gauntlet of magic for their attackers to struggle through. It was a tactic that would serve them well against the Long Watch—but bring the elite companies behind into the middle of their ranks.

  Keya was ten steps from the Meadow Wall when Khelben’s voice came to her in her mind. Nothing to fear, my dear.

  Who’s afraid? she retorted. Just kill the thornbacks—and tell Dex to keep his mind—

  That was as far as she made it before the first rank reached the Meadow Wall. With only their swords in hand and light Evereskan armor on their bodies, they leaped onto the wall in one stride and disappeared over its crest on the second. Keya and the rest of the second rank were slower. They had to brace a hand on top of the wall and swing their legs up beside them—and by then, the first rank was already stopped dead in its tracks, filling the air with eerie wails as their legs crumbled into ash.

  Keya kept herself from going over by dropping to her seat and bracing her spear on the other side of the Meadow Wall. In front of her, Zharilee and half a dozen other elves seemed to be melting into the ground as first their legs, then their hips and torsos dissolved into a pile of gray cinders. She nearly fell when the shaft of her spear crumbled as well.

  A young Gold elf from the third rank crashed into her from behind, and she grabbed the back of his helmet to prevent herself from going over.

  “What’s the hold up?” he demanded. “Get a move on!”

  “Not wise.” Keya pulled his head over the wall and forced him to look at the dissipating ash piles. “Those are our friends.”

  The young sun elf turned the color of a withered birch leaf, but many in the Long Watch were not so fortunate. Much of the third rank simply leaped onto the backs of the second rank, forcing them over the wall into the Vine Vale and beyond the protection of the mythal. As soon as their feet touched the blackened ground, their bodies crumbled into cinders and collapsed.

  Without the constant rain of arrows from the Long Watch, the phaerimm and beholders finally began to float forward, coming closer to the mythal. Keya glanced back and, over the retching figure of the elf who had nearly pushed her to her death, saw the Company of the Cold Hand charging up to vault the wall behind them.

  Still sitting astride the wall, Keya raised both hands. “Khelben, stop them! You made a mistake!”

  “Mistake?” Khelben’s voice boomed across the valley like a clap of thunder. “Impossible!”

  “Khelben, it is possible—the Vale is a death trap!”

  For a long and terrible moment, the Cold Hand continued to rush forward. A golden mythal meteor roared down behind her, cratering the blackened ground and spraying her with so much dirt and stone that she was knocked off the wall back into the meadow. Lord Duirsar’s mages launched a volley of lightning bolts and black death rays that streaked overhead and—so far as Keya could tell from where she was cowering down behind the wall—had absolutely no effect on the enemy.

  Then, much to her horror, an avalanche of stones shot across the wall above her and found the young Gold who had nearly pushed her into the Vine Vale. The pile took him square in the chest, reducing his torso to a spray of blood and bone, then crashed to the ground behind him and rolled off trailing a spray of crimson.

  That was enough to halt the charge of the Cold Hand—and send what remained of the Long Watch scurrying back toward Evereska. The enemy had attacked into the meadow. The mythal was weakening, and fast. Keya suppressed a gasp and rolled into a crouch, then poked her head up to find a beholder hovering not a spear’s length away, its great central eye projecting a powerful antimagic ray into the failing mythal. Behind it, a phaerimm was floating forward to exploit the resulting gap in the LastHaven’s magic defenses.

  Keya had just time enough to see that the scene was much the same in other places along the wall before the phaerimm pointed in her direction. A stream of stones rose off a vineyard wall and came streaking in her direction. She rolled away. The rocks slammed into the Meadow Wall behind her, smashing through and raining shards of broken granite into the meadow. Finding herself alone next to the breach, she took a deep breath and reached for her sword.

  Keya, no! came Dexon’s voice.

  She started to tell him to mind his own business and let her do her duty, then hesitated when she realized that would be the last thing anyone ever heard from her.

  In that moment Dexon added, Here!

  Keya looked toward the Company of the Cold Hand and saw Dexon’s darksword flying toward her hilt-first. Reaching up to catch it, she thought, Thanks, Dex—love you.

  Deciding those were much better last words than what she had been thinking a moment before, she brought the darksword up before her and spun into the gap in a squat—and came nose-to-mouth with a crawling phaerimm. For an instant, she was almost too stunned to comprehend what she was
seeing. Thornbacks did not crawl, they floated … and why was she still alive anyway? It had only to think a spell and she would be an elf-shaped cinder.

  It opened its toothy mouth and stretched four spindly arms toward her, and suddenly none of that mattered. She brought Dexon’s darksword down, splitting it open for two feet past its mouth, then brought the blade around and slashed it in the opposite direction. The phaerimm whistled and recoiled, grabbing Keya by the shoulders and rearing up on its tail. She kicked at its torso with both feet, hacking herself free of its arms and dropping on her shoulder.

  Still using no magic, the thing lunged and snapped at Keya’s feet. She kicked free and rolled over her shoulder—then glimpsed one of the beholders shining its antimagic ray over the phaerimm and understood. She drew her dagger with her free hand and flipped it at the eye tyrant in one swift motion.

  Keya was no bladesinger. The dagger struck pommel first—hardly fatal, but enough. The beholder blinked, and in that instant, the mythal’s magic returned to the gap. The phaerimm screeched and started to retreat back into the Vine Vale, but not quickly enough to avoid the golden meteor that streaked down from the heavens and slammed it to ground—where it quickly dissolved into a pile of ash only a little larger than those left behind by the first wave of the Long Watch.

  Before the stunned beholder could recover, Keya leaped onto the Meadow Wall rubble and brought the darksword across the middle of its spherical body. A cascade of dark gore spilled out of the wound, and it dropped to the ground without so much as a curse. Keya brought the darksword around and started down the wall toward the next beholder, then cried out in astonishment when she felt a magic hand pluck her off the crest and carry her back into the Company of the Cold Hand.

  “Let’s not get carried away, young lady,” Kiinyon Colbathin said, stepping to her side. He gestured down the way, to where the survivors of the Long Watch were charging back to the Meadow Wall behind a storm of spears and arrows. “Let someone else have a go at them.”